TUTORIAL: Why Variables Should Not Be Named Dynamically (eval)
Summary:
Dynamically accessing variable names can negatively impact the readability of your code and can cause it to run slower by preventing MATLAB from optimizing it as well as it could if you used alternate techniques. The most common alternative is to use simple and efficient indexing.
Explanation:
Sometimes beginners (and some self-taught professors) think it would be a good idea to dynamically create or access variable names, the variables are often named something like these:
- matrix1, matrix2, matrix3, matrix4, ...
- test_20kmh, test_50kmh, test_80kmh, ...
- nameA, nameB, nameC, nameD,...
Good reasons why dynamic variable names should be avoided:
- Slow
- Buggy
- Security Risk
- Difficult to Work With
- Obfuscated Code Intent
- Confuses Data with Code
- Code Helper Tools do not Work
- Magically Making Variables Appear in a Workspace is Risky
There are much better alternatives to accessing dynamic variable names:
- Indexing into Cell Array or ND-Array
- Non-scalar Structures (with Indexing)
- Dynamic Field-Names in a Structure
- load into a Structure, not into the Workspace
- save the Fields of a Scalar Structure
- Use a table or timetable Array
- Use more Efficient Ways to Pass Variables Between Workspaces
Note that avoiding eval (and assignin, etc.) is not some esoteric MATLAB restriction, it also applies to many other programming languages as well:
MATLAB Documentation:
If you are not interested in reading the answers below then at least read MATLAB's own documentation on this topic Alternatives to the eval Function, which states "A frequent use of the eval function is to create sets of variables such as A1, A2, ..., An, but this approach does not use the array processing power of MATLAB and is not recommended. The preferred method is to store related data in a single array." Data in a single array can be accessed very efficiently using indexing.
Note that all of these problems and disadvantages also apply to functions load (without an output variable), assignin, evalin, and evalc, and the MATLAB documentation explicitly recommends to "Avoid functions such as eval, evalc, evalin, and feval(fname)".
The official MATLAB blogs explain why eval should be avoided, the better alternatives to eval, and clearly recommend against magically creating variables. Using eval comes out at position number one on this list of Top 10 MATLAB Code Practices That Make Me Cry. Experienced MATLAB users recommend avoiding using eval for trivial code, and have written extensively on this topic.
33 Comments
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thx info
thx info
if input assign is slow it can fault
My problem stems from creating the arrays.
I should have used a "struct array" from the beginning. I am starting to get an appreciation of "struct arrays" and when to use them.
Thank you, that helped me a lot.
Very insightful. Thank you.
@Stephen23, I just wanted to say thanks for putting this extensive page together. I was about to use eval() for something because I thought there was no other way, but after reading this page from top to bottom I feel like a) I now understand why not to use eval() and b) I know the correct way to solve the issue I was having. I found the 'better alternaives' section especiclaly helpful, as a lot of the other posts about eval() seem to focus heavily on the reasons not to use it, but don't really teach you how to avoid it. Anyway, thanks for creating/maintaining the page :)
@Ed Wheatcroft: thank you for the feedback :)
I think the challenge when offering alternatives is that there are multiple alternatives, each applied to different situations. So there is no single "replace A with B", because it requires first understanding if B or C or D or E or F etc. is a better approach for a particular situation. I guess this overwhelms some users, which is why I tried to clearly map specific situations (via linked examples) to specific alternatives.
Alternative: Use a table or timetable Array
table (introduced in release R2013b) and timetable (introduced in release R2016b) arrays allow you to store data with row and/or column names with which you can access the data. For example, if you create a table with variables named Age, Gender, Height, Weight, and Smoker and rows named with the last names of the patients:
load patients
patients = table(Age,Gender,Height,Weight,Smoker,...
'RowNames',LastName);
you can ask for all the ages of the first five patients:
patients(1:5, 'Age')
or all the data for the patients with last names Smith or Jones:
patients({'Smith', 'Jones'}, :)
You can also add new variables to the table, either by hard-coding the name of the variable:
% Indicate if patients are greater than five and a half feet tall
patients.veryTall = patients.Height > 66
or using variable names stored in char or string variables. The code sample below creates new variables named over40 and under35 in the patients table using different indexing techniques.
newname1 = 'over40';
patients.(newname1) = patients.Age > 40;
newname2 = 'under35';
patients{:, newname2} = patients.Age < 35;
patients(1:10, :) % Show the first ten rows
The code sample below selects either Height or Weight and shows the selected variable for the fifth through tenth patients using dynamic names.
if rand > 0.5
selectedVariable = 'Height';
else
selectedVariable = 'Weight';
end
patients.(selectedVariable)(5:10)
See this documentation page for more information about techniques you can use to access and manipulate data in a table or timetable array. This documentation page contains information about accessing data in a timetable using the time information associated with the rows.
Simpler and more robust way to generate a table from that .mat file:
S = load('patients.mat');
T = struct2table(S,'RowNames',S.LastName);
Alternative: save the Fields of a Scalar Structure
The save command has an option for saving the fields of a scalar structure as separate variables in a .mat file. For example, given a scalar structure:
S.A = 1;
S.B = [2,3];
this will save variables A and B in the .mat file:
save('myfile.mat','-struct','S')
This is the inverse function of loading into a structure. Some threads showing how this can be used:
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