Assigning a value to certain indexed elements of a struc variable

I am trying to assign a certain value to several elements of an indexed structure:

indices = 1:3
people(indices).gender ='m'

..but get the error

"Expected one output from a curly brace or dot indexing expression, but there were 3 results."

Is this a limitation of how Matlab can work with structures, or am I making a mistake in how I am using these variables?

Is this the (still not implemented) enhancement described in this other thread reporting the same error?

Thanks for any help! I am using 2016b.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

[people(indices).gender] = 'm';

[z8080]

If you try to run this code it will probably give you the same error that it gives me, which is: "Insufficient number of outputs from right hand side of equal sign to satisfy assignment.".

[Stephen23]

[people(indices).gender] = deal('m');

[z8080]

Thank you Stephen, this command does what I wanted it. Thanks to Walter as well.

[Jos (10584)]

Just to show you another way, which can be used when you initialise the struct array:

people(1:3) = struct('gender','m') ;

[Walter Roberson]

Note that Jos's solution only works for the initial creation of the output, not for setting a field within an existing structure

[z8080]

Thanks Jos, this is good to know as well!