Can i format output of matlab command such that i can use it to declare a new variable? - arrays

Question

It's best explained with an easier example. Say some script in MATLAB gives me a cell array of strings:
temp = dir;
names = {temp.name}'
ans =
'folder1'
'folder2'
'file1'
I would like to use this output in another script, in another matlab session. Ideally, in the second script i would write
names = {'folder1', 'folder2', 'file1'}
but this means copypasting the output right under "ans = " and then manually adding the commas and curly brackets. In my case the cell array is quite large so this is undesirable. Even more it feels clumsy and there could be an easier way. Is there any way to make matlab print the output in such a way that i do not have to do this?
Exactly the same thing would be nice to know for matrices instead of cell arrays!!
I am aware of saving the variable in a .mat file and loading it, but i was wondering if the above is also possible (it would be cleaner in my case).

Answer 1

Personally I would advise the use of a cleaner way of handling this (such as mat files).
But then again sometimes the time spent setting these up is just not worth it for simple tasks which are unlikely to be repeated much...
For matrices there is a builtin function to do this, for cells however we would need produce a sting with the required format...
Matrix
For 1d or 2d matrices mat2str provides this functionality
mat2str(eye(2))
ans =
[1 0;0 1]
Cell
However to my knowledge there is no such builtin function for cells.
For a 1d cell array of strings the following will give the output in a copyable format:
['{',sprintf('''%s'' ',names{:}),'}']
ans =
{'folder1' 'folder2' 'file1' }
note: the stings in the cells cannot contain the ' character

Answer 2

If i understand you correctly, you are getting the names output from one script and want to use it within another script. Since you then cannot pass it as function argument, you are currently copying it over. One could do that with eval and copy&paste around:
names = {'folder1'
'folder2'
'file1'};
% create the command
n = length(names);
cmd = sprintf(['names = {',repmat('''%s'', ', 1, n-1) ,'''%s''}'], names{:}); % '%s, %s, ...., %s' format
% cmd contains the string: names_new = {'folder1', 'folder2', 'file1'}
% eval the cmd in script 2
eval(cmd) % evals the command names = {'folder1', 'folder2', 'file1'}
But this is generally very bad practice as it gets insanely hard to debug if something goes wrong somewhere. Also it makes you copy and paste things around, which i feel is uncomfortable. How about storing them in a txt file and loading them in the second script? It gets things done autmatically.
names = {'folder1'
'folder2'
'file1'};
% write output to file
fid = fopen('mynames.txt', 'w'); % open file to write something
fprintf(fid, [repmat('%s, ',1, n-1), '%s'], names{:});
fclose(fid);
% here comes script 2
fid = fopen('mynames.txt', 'r'); % open file to read something
names_loaded = textscan(fid, '%s');
names_loaded = names_loaded{:};
fclose(fid)

Answer 3

I think the key here is that you have a variable in 1 place, and want to use it in a different case.
In that situation you don't want to copy the output matlab generates, you just want to save the value itself.
After finding the result just do this:
save names
Later you can load this variable with
load names
Check doc save and doc names for more extensive examples. You may for example want to save all relevant variables in a file with a more generic name.