A struct in the workspace window consists of n (say 1000 or more) different variable names. How to quickly look for a variable name without any code?

I am having a struct data type that consists of 2000 different names of places with their avg temperatures . When I open the struct variable I get a huge list. How can I quickly locate the variable and read its values without scrolling down to every variable. I don't see any find option in the window. One may say I can code it. Yes, I can do that but I am looking for alternative quick ways so that I don't need to write the code to find it.

[Stephen23]

Copy-and-paste to a text file, then use a text search function.

[dpb]

What is the definition of "read" here? Simply look at the values or then actually do something with them?

If this is a common need, I would think the logical solution would be to write the function once and be done would beat most anything else -- @Stephen23's way still then needs another lookup tool.

The biggest issue I would see is perhaps the need for other than exact match lookup; there aren't any features available for that in variable name matching with the builtin fieldnames manipulation functions.

Alternatively, similar idea would be convert the struct to an array/text file and use a grep utility for search that does support regular expressions.

[Srujeeth B]

Yeah you got it right @dpb. By ''read'', I meant to look for the value. As I frequently handle data and need to quickly look for some variables and its values, so that I can take a necessary action.

I was thinking of some search tools that would ease the process. As @dpb mentioning there isn't any such tool in matlab variable list window that help in quick search. @Stephen23 was suggesting use of other tool as well. It seems like there aren't any quick solutions, its better I use the tools suggested (@dpb+@Stephen23) or simply hard code it.

Thank You @dpb + @Stephen23!!

[dpb]

If you were to turn the struct into a table or cell array, then you could use the MATLAB builtin pattern-matching tools for non-exact matching--or export the fieldnames and search it that way.

[Walter Roberson]

You might find it helps to use orderfields

[Fangjun Jiang]

s.a=1;
s.b=2;
open s

In the variable editor, you can click on "Field" to sort the field names.

[dpb]

But if there are 1000 or more, it would still be a lot of scrolling to one in the middle somewhere...

[Stephen23]

"@Stephen23 was suggesting use of other tool as well"

I believe that the MATLAB Editor has a text search function.

[dpb]

But that is another tool itself... :) And it's a very cumbersome one, besides...

[Fangjun Jiang]

Yes. Adding a "find" capability in workspace editor and variable editor would be nice.

[dpb]

@Srujeeth B, how about attaching a short section of the struct so folks could poke at it and see if any better ideas are thus engendered? Seeing the actual structure might lead to some other ideas that just talking about it in general didn't prompt...