checking if a nested field exists

I have a nested field A.B.C and I would like to check if C exists.

B changes and has a different name depending on what file I use so I can’t do isfield(A.B,C), but I know what B is in this way:

isfield(['A.' D.E.F{i}],'C')

This should give me logical=1, but it gives 0 and I don’t understand why. Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks in advance

[Stephen23]

"This should give me logical=1, but it gives 0 and I don’t understand why. "

Character vectors do not have fields.

Answer 1

[Jan]

In your code:

isfield(['A.' D.E.F{i}],'C')

what is D.E.F{i}? A concatenation with 'A.' will create a char vector. Char vectors are no structs, so isfield replies false as expected.

Try this instead:

% Some test data:
A1.B.C         = 1;
A2.AnyStuff    = '?';
A2.FunnyName.C = 2;
A3.HasNoC.D    = 3;
A3.Nonsense    = {};

% TRUE if subfield is existing:
hasSubField(A1, 'C')
hasSubField(A2, 'C')
hasSubField(A3, 'C')

function T = hasSubField(S, F)
T    = false;
Data = struct2cell(S);
for k = 1:numel(Data)
   if isfield(Data{k}, F)
      T = true;
      return;
   end
end
end

This searchs for a subfield in the first level. If any of the fields is a struct and contains the field provided by the input F, true is replied. Or are you searching for deeply nested structs also?