How to save a struct to a file using a variable filename in Octave?

Question

In Octave I would like to save a struct to a textfile where the name of the file is decided during the runtime of the script. With my approach I always get an error:

expecting all arguments to be strings.

(For a fixed filename this works fine.) So how to save a struct to a file using a variable filename?

clear all;
myStruct(1).resultA = 1;
myStruct(1).resultB = 2;
myStruct(2).resultA = 3;
myStruct(2).resultB = 4;

variableFilename = strftime ("result_%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M.mat", localtime(time()))

save fixedFilename.mat myStruct; 
% this works and saves the struct in fixedFilename.mat

save( "-text", variableFilename, myStruct); 
% this gives error: expecting all arguments to be strings

When using save as a function you need to do save( "-text", variableFilename, "myStruct"); i.e. all arguments are strings. — JuanPi
– JuanPi, Commented Aug 18, 2012 at 1:10

Eric Leschinski · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-23 15:31:14Z

6

In Octave, When using save as a function you need to do something like this:

myfilename = "stuff.txt";
mystruct = [ 1 2; 3 4]
save("-text", myfilename, "mystruct");

The above code will create a stuff.txt file and the matrix data is put in there.

The above code will only work when mystruct is a matrix, if you have a cell of strings, it will fail. For those, you can roll your own:

 xKey = cell(2, 1);
 xKey{1} = "Make me a sandwich...";
 xKey{2} = "OUT OF BABIES!";
 outfile = fopen("something.txt", "a");
 for i=1:rows(xKey),
   fprintf(outfile, "%s\n", xKey{i,1});
 end
 fflush(outfile);
 fclose(outfile);

answered Aug 23, 2012 at 15:31

Eric Leschinski

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1 Comment

marco Over a year ago

Thank you for your answer, it also contains the correct solution to my problem as JuanPi already said: I had to put the name of the struct inside" " when calling the save function. For saving such strings in a cell it is maybe more convenient to put them inside a struct and not a cell, because then the solution above also works and there is no need to handle the fileoutput on your own.

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