sprintf of a variable and string name

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it's needed to display a variable string name. for example:
for i=1:w I have these:
i=1 >>>> name='t56757w_e_l_l'
i=2 >>>> name='h_a_h_a_h_a067'
i=3 >>>> name='a56754no_the_r'
.
.
.
't56757w_e_l_l' and 'h_a_h_a_h_a067' and 'a56754no_the_r' ,... are the names of matrix.
Problem: its needed to plot a figure in these names that i syaed above but when i use:
figure('Name',sprintf('%s',name))
sprintf('%s',name) gives numbers of arrays of matrix and not the name of that.
  2 Comments
Fangjun Jiang
Fangjun Jiang on 17 Sep 2011
You might have many variables. How do you know 't56757w_e_l_l' is corresponding to i=1, 'h_a_h_a_h_a067' is corresponding to i=2, etc.?
mohammad
mohammad on 17 Sep 2011
because I give these names manually in each loop.
in other words in each loop, it asks to import a .xls file and read this file and that must put in a matrix that name of this matrix must be same with .xls file name.
so these name in each loop are the names of .xls files

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Accepted Answer

Fangjun Jiang
Fangjun Jiang on 17 Sep 2011
In that case, the name is actually given manually. To avoid entering the same name twice, maybe you can do this.
Name='t56757w_e_l_l';
Data=xlsread([Name,'.xls']);
assignin('base',Name,Data);
sprintf('%s',Name)
You know the name of the variable. You need to use this variable. You also want to use the variable name in its string format.
The name sounds very irregular. You have to specify it manually. Why can't you also specify the string since you have already specified the variable name? It doesn't make a difference if you specify it once, or twice. Like.
plot(t56757w_e_l_l); title('t56757w_e_l_l');
Or, if you are willing to make a function, you can do this
function PlotAndTitle(a) plot(a); title(inputname(1));
You can call it this way:
PlotAndTitle(t56757w_e_l_l)
  6 Comments
Fangjun Jiang
Fangjun Jiang on 17 Sep 2011
Good catch, Image Analyst! I didn't pay attention to the underscore effect in the title() string.
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 1 Nov 2011
If you want to have an actual underline in the string, you can replace the underline with a backslash underline with this code:
yourString = strrep(yourString , '_', '\_');
before you call title() or text().
This will make sure you get the underline to show up when you use title() and text().

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More Answers (1)

Malcolm Lidierth
Malcolm Lidierth on 17 Sep 2011
No. sprintf(%s,name) gives:
Error: Expression or statement is incorrect--possibly unbalanced (, {, or [.
(In fact missing single quotes). Try pasting the actual code.
figure('Name',sprintf('%s',name)) works, and will make sense if name is a char array.

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