Is there a comand to select variables with a specific name from workspace

I have the following problem:

I have a loop which loads files X Y Z from different matfiles so that I have the files X Y Z in the workspace as well as a variable loaded_files = {'X', 'Y', 'Z'}.

Now I want to create a Matrix XYZ = [X; Y; Z] in an automated way like this: XYZ = [loaded_files].

The names of the variables to concatenate are actually listed in the variable loaded_files. Is ther a command which allows that?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Much safer would be using the form of load that load the mat file into fields of a structure (by simply giving an output variable to load). This avoid the risk of overwriting essential variables. In your case, if one of these mat file accidentally contain a loaded_files variable, your code will fail.

It's also more practical for your purpose:

%loading the mat files. Taking a guess at your code
%filestoload: cell array of mat file names
filecontents = cell(size(filestoload));  %allocate cell array to store structures returned by load
for fileidx = 1:numel(filestoload)
   filecontents{filedix} = load(filestoload{fileidx});
end

%concatenating relevant variables
%loaded_variables = {'X', 'Y', 'Z'};  %loaded_variables is a better name than loaded_files
xyz = [];
for fileidx = 1:numel(filestoload)
   xyz = [xyz; filecontents{fileidx}.(loaded_variables{filedix})];
end

The above relies on the fact that you can generate structure field names from variables

[André Gündel]

Thanks, this helped a lot.