Create single structure array with variables in for loop.

Hello, I am processing a series of text files that I then need to save the variables in each iteration for further manipulation within Matlab. I have followed the Matlab FAQ Wiki to process the files as shown below and save variables at each iteration. What happens, however, is that I create a separate .mat structure array for each file, which I then need to index the data out of:

    data1 = load('myfilename1.mat')
    data1 = data1.x

    data2 = load('myfilename2.mat')
    data2 = data2.x

What I would like to to do is create a single .mat structure array file where each string array within the structure array is the file name. So, for example, that would make loading the processed files easy, like this:

alldata = load('alldata.mat')
data1 = alldata.myfilename1
data2 = alldata.myfilename2
data3 = alldata.myfilename3
etc.

Thanks very much, here is my current code below, which works fine but is then incredibly clunky to load the data back into Matlab. Actually, I would prefer to not even save the files and just load the variables into the workspace with the filenames, but from my understanding, that is not recommended.

% Specify the folder where the files live.
myFolder = 'H:\mypath';

% Check to make sure that folder actually exists, warn if it does not.
if ~isdir(myFolder)
  errorMessage = sprintf('Error: The following folder does not exist:\n%s', myFolder);
  uiwait(warndlg(errorMessage));
  return;
end

% Get a list of all files in the folder with the desired file name pattern.
filePattern = fullfile(myFolder, '*.txt');
theFiles = dir(filePattern);
for k = 1 : length(theFiles)
  baseFileName = theFiles(k).name;
  fullFileName = fullfile(myFolder, baseFileName);
  fprintf(1, 'Now reading %s\n', fullFileName);

    % Import data as character string
     x = fileread(fullFileName);
     x = cellstr(x);

    % do a bunch of manipulations removed here for clarity
    % convert data to string arrays
     x = string(x);

    % name and save as a .mat file
     name = strrep(baseFileName,'.txt','.mat');
     save(name,'x')

end

[Luke McLellan]

You could try creating a cell of arrays for your data and then implement something along the lines of

Cell_Matrix = zeros(x,y);
for z = 1:length(Cell)
    Cell_Matrix(z,:) = Cell{1,z,:};
end

Answer 1

[OCDER]

 %Creating some example files storing example x's
 for k = 1:10
      x = rand(3);
      save(sprintf('myfilename%d.mat', k), 'x');
 end

 %Get the file names
 AllFiles = dir(fullfile(baseDir, 'myfilename*.mat'));
 AllFiles = fullfile({AllFiles.folder}, {AllFiles.name});

 %Get the variable 'x' from all your file names
 GetVar = 'x'; %The variable you want to get
 AllX = cellfun(@(z) z.(GetVar), cellfun(@(z) load(z, GetVar), AllFiles, 'un', 0), 'un', 0); %Unwrapping twice... (maybe someone knows a cleaner way?)

 AllX is a cell array storing all the values 'x' per cell in order of the file name

%Might have to re-sort file names and AllX as you'll get order like
 myfilename1
 myfilename10
 myfilename2
 myfilename3

See this for natural sorting code: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/47434-natural-order-filename-sort