Can you call a matrix from a string

Question

I have to make a call to read in a matrix with a name that is created from a strcat, in Matlab. For example

person = 2;
Index_XNY = strcat('Index_X',num2str(person),'Y');

Big_Index = find(Index_XNY(1,:)==1);

This works if I replace Index_XNY with Index_X2Y for this example.

I have tried a number of different things to obtain Big_Index, but so far I have not been successful. Can this be done, as there is a large collection of data elements that need to be called.

Answer 1

You can use the eval function to evaluate a Matlab expression in a string:

expr = strcat('find(Index_X',num2str(person),'Y(1,:)==1)');
Big_Index = eval(expr);

Of course, a lot of alternative ways to do this with eval function exist, depending on how much you would like to put into the string and how much would be left out.