MATLAB: Scalar vs nonscalar structure: advantages

Question

Hi,

What are the advantages/disadvantages of both typs of structures?

I am about to save my research participant data in Matlab but undecided about which type of structure to use.

Thank you,

TD

Answer 1

What you want to do with your data? This documentation page gives two examples that show how each type of struct allows you to "slice" your data in a different way.

In the first example (the RGB image) accessing all the data in one color plane is easy while accessing all the data for a single pixel across the three planes is more involved.

In the second example (the patient data) accessing all the data for one patient is easy while accessing a particular piece of data for all patients is more involved.

I would like to point out one alternative that may be a better fit for your needs. If you have data arranged as a rectangular table consider storing it as a table array or a timetable array. If you look at the examples on the table documentation page you can see that you can access all data for a particular patient (in the "Specify Row Names" example) or all of a particular type of data for each patient ("Store Related Data Variables in Table") through one indexing expression.