How to loop through subsets of series in a database

I have a data file (csv) with 20 time series, and I need to loop through all possible subsets of 5 time series within this set, inputting the five series in a database, carry out some operations on them, then clear the database and select the next subset of 5 series, and so on until all combinations of 5 series have been exhausted.

What is the best way to do this? Presumably some sort of a for loop, but is there a ready made function in matlab for this? A complication is that the 5 series in a given database need to be different, ie I cannot have a subset where two or more of the series are the same. Hence I cannot just loop through all series in a sequence of for loops.

Any help much appreciated thanks!

[per isakson]

What is your meaning of the word "database"?

[Marko Melolinna]

Sorry, should have been clear this is Iris toolbox function dbase. Not crucial that data is fetched into dbase, could also be into a matrix, as long as I can do some calculations on the series and keep track of the names of series in the matrix at each subset selection.

[per isakson]

• "names of series" &nbsp are the names column headers in the csv-file? Show a few rows of the csv-file
• "ready made function" &nbsp I guess you need to write a short script
• if you have R2013b or later, see readtable, Create table from file and Tables, Arrays in tabular form whose named columns can have different types

[Marko Melolinna]

Yes, csv 1st row is series names