Converting table elements to individual arrays and assigning the same header

I have an n x 85 table and I'm looking for a way to assign each of these individual columns to a separate array under the same existing header name (all string). table2array(T) let's me convert the table to individual arrays but I want to run a for loop in order to assign the same header to each of these newly created arrays. I've extracted the header names using the following where T is my table: table_names = T.Properties.VariableNames.

Not sure how to now assign this name to the rest of the numeric data from each column on the table.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Stephen23]

"Any help would be greatly appreciated!"

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

Answer 1

[Michael Habermann]

t = table();
t.col_a = [1;2;3];
t.col_b = [10;11;12]

t = 3×2 table
    col_a    col_b
    _____    _____

      1       10  
      2       11  
      3       12  

column_names = t.Properties.VariableNames;
for i = 1:numel(column_names)
    colname = string(column_names(i));
    eval(sprintf("%s = t.(colname)", colname))
end

col_a = 3×1

1 2 3

col_b = 3×1

10 11 12

[Stephen23]

Of course with the additional comment, that this will make your code slow, fragile, and harder to debug:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

[Akshay]

Hi Michael,

I get the following error when I try to run your code: "Table variable names must be character vectors". Not sure why you weren't seeing the same error?

[Akshay]

Seems to work on R2021b as opposed to R2017b before. Thanks for the help!