Adding arrays found using 'who' function

Hello,

I have used the 'who' function to obtain the required 2D numeric arrays from a list of variables, like this;

Find_Target_Vars = who ('Target_Str')

Find_Target_Vars =

    'A'
    'B'
    'C'

I now need to create a new (numeric,double) variable D, so that D = A + B + C.

How can I get from the list of variables in the cell array, Find_Target_Vars, to adding the actual listed variables together?

Many thanks, Iain

Answer 1

[Jos (10584)]

This is one of the (rare) cases EVAL comes in handy.

evalStr = sprintf('%s+', Find_Target_Vars{:}) ;
evalStr = evalStr(1:end-1) ; % remove trailing +
D = eval(evalStr)

Jos

[Oleg Komarov]

Evil

[the cyclist]

But a necessary evil? These seems one of the few times that eval is truly needed!

[Oleg Komarov]

Depends how A, B and C were generated...if a cell array of a struct were unavailable then probably eval is the only way.

[Iain]

That works perfectly, thank you! On this occasion I'm more than happy to use Evil for good...

[Walter Roberson]

If eval is the answer, then you are probably asking the wrong question.

If you are having to examine the workspace to figure out what variables are there, then you are probably doing something that there are better ways to do -- something like having used load() to poof variables into the workspace.