Question

I have a variable a = 1. I want to generate a variable name of the form:

variableNumber  

So in this example, I would want

a1
a2
a3

as variables. How can I do that?

Answer 1

Try genvarname.

varname = genvarname(str)

is the basic syntax for use. MATLAB documentation has detailed examples of using this function with an exclusion list (for ensuring unique variable names). You will have to use eval or another function (e.g. assignin, mentioned in an earlier answer) to utilise this variable name.

To answer the question completely,

varnamelist = genvarname({'a','a','a','a','a'});
for l=1:length(varnamelist)
  eval([varnamelist{l} '= l^2']);
end

Of course, there are more efficient ways of putting together an input list for genvarname, this is left as an exercise 😉

If you’re concerned about performance, note that eval may slow down the script/function greatly; personally I would recommend the use of struct or cell datatypes if you need dynamic variable naming.