How do I make the names in my file header the names of the variables I load?

Solution:

Assume that a file named 'mydata.txt' stores tab delimited data whose column wise contents you would like to assign to the variables with the names same as the column headers in the file. This is the contents of 'mydata.txt':

Student	Major	                Grade	Graduation
John	Engineering	89	2003
Marcy	Computer Science	83	2005
Don	Biology	                82	2004
Diane	Applied Math	88	2004

Step 1: Read the column headers and data from the file.
%open file
fid = fopen('mydata.txt','r');
%Read the first line of the file containing the header information
headerline = fgetl(fid);
%The file pointer is now at the beginning of the second line. Use TEXTSCAN to read the columns of data.
data = textscan(fid,'%s%s%d%d','Delimiter','\t')
%close file
fclose(fid);
Step 2:
Convert the column headers into individual elements stored in a cell array.
headers = textscan(headerline,'%s','Delimiter','\t');
Step 3: Use EVAL statements to copy the column data into the individual for k = 1:length(headers{:})
eval([headers{1}{k} '= data{k};']);
end