how to initialise a struct array with pairs?

I want to keep pairs next to each other during initialisation.

The result what I want is something like this:

data(1).shortname = 'TJ';
data(1).longname = 'Tom Jones';
data(2).shortname = 'JS';
data(2).longname = 'John Smith';
...

But I want to initialise this struct array similar to the following method somehow:

data = ...  'TJ', 'Tom Jones', 'JS', 'John Smith', ...

or

data = ...  {'TJ', 'Tom Jones'}, {'JS', 'John Smith'}, ...

Is it possible?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

One possible way:

pairs = {'TJ', 'Tom Jones';
         'JS', 'John Smith'};
data = struct('shortname', pairs(:, 1), 'longname', pairs(:, 2))

Alternatively:

pairs = {'TJ', 'Tom Jones';
         'JS', 'John Smith'};
data = cell2struct(pairs, {'shortname', 'longname'}, 2);

In any case, start with a cell array and convert to structure.

[Mr M.]

I wonder the syntax pairs(:, 1). Isn't it pairs{:, 1}?

[Guillaume]

Definitively () and not {}. You want to pass a cell array to struct, not the content of the cell array, particularly as in this case the {} would expand the cell array into a comma separated list

Answer 2

[Thorsten]

Initialise

data(1).name  = {'TJ', 'Tom Jones'};
data(2).name =  {'JS', 'John Smith'};

Get entries

   data(1).name{1}

ans =

TJ

>> data(1).name{2}

ans =

Tom Jones

Answer 3

[Andrei Bobrov]

out = num2cell(reshape(struct2cell(data),2,[])',2)