define variable by concatenating strings

Question

I want to iteratively define a variable whose name is the concatenation of two strings.

In particular, the following code is meant to create a variable Uvel_spring that contains the values Uvel stored in the file spring_surface.mat :

seasons{1}='spring';
seasons{2}='summer';
seasons{3}='autumn';
seasons{4}='winter';

for ii=1:4

    ['Uvel_',char(seasons(ii))] = load([char(seasons(ii)),'_surface.mat'],...
             'Uvel');

end

However, I get the following error:

An array for multiple LHS assignment cannot contain LEX_TS_STRING.

I solved it by using evalc:

for ii=1:4

   evalc( sprintf(['Uvel_',char(seasons(ii)),'=','load(''',char(seasons(ii)),'_surface.mat'',',...
             '''Uvel''',')']) );

end

However, it is horrible and I would like to improve the code.

Does someone have an alternative solution?

Answer 1

Use struct instead.

for ii=1:4
    Uvel.(seasons{ii}) = load([seasons{ii},'_surface.mat'], 'Uvel');
end

You'll end up having those four seasons as the fields of Uvel. So you'll be accessing Uvel_spring as Uvel.spring and similarly for others.