How can I access a structure by using purely strings?

My current code requests a structure from the user as an input in the form of its name 'file'. I am trying to access this structure in my function with the string 'file'. For example

structure's name is file

i can access the fields in it by writing file.field. I can also do n = 'field'; and access the same thing doing file.(n). I cannot however do y = 'file' and access the same field doing (y).(n). Is there a way around this?

Thanks

[Kirby Fears]

If you have many named structures you're trying to iterate over, like 'file1', 'file2', etc, why don't you put them all into subfields of a root struct?

root.file1.field could be accessed as root.(y).(n) as you pointed out.

[Xavier]

Yes that would be nice, but unfortunately that is not the case. I only have 1 structure, and I cannot guaranteed what the "root" structure name is.

[Stephen23]

@Xavier: there are ways, but MATLAB has a whole page recommending against this:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/string-evaluation.html

Read this to know some reasons for avoiding doing this:

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

If you actually describe the whole situation a bit more, then we can advise you better ways to achieves what you want to do. Are you using load ?