How to create table array in MATLAB?

Question

I would like to store multiple tables in one array. In my code below, I am creating two tables T1 and T2. I want to store these tables into one variable MyArray.

LastName = {'Sanchez';'Johnson';'Li';'Diaz';'Brown'};
Age = [38;43;38;40;49];
Smoker = logical([1;0;1;0;1]);
Height = [71;69;64;67;64];
Weight = [176;163;131;133;119];
BloodPressure = [124 93; 109 77; 125 83; 117 75; 122 80];
T1 = table(LastName,Age,Smoker);
T2 = table(Height,Weight,BloodPressure);

% The code below does not work
MyArray(1) = T1;
MyArray(2) = T2;

I know I can use a cell array but I would like to know if it is possible to create a table datatype array in MATLAB.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 04 '18 at 07:56

Because table already implements () indexing, it's not really clear to me how you would expect to index MyArray. Your example almost looks to me like MyArray = [T1, T2].

I'm not sure if it satisfies your needs, but you can have table objects with table variables, like this:

T = table(T1, T2);

You can then using indexing as normal, e.g.

T.T1.LastName{2}

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 04 '18 at 05:55

There was a time when

builtin('subsref',T1,substruct('()',{1}))

(for any custom class T1^*) would skip calling the class-specific overloaded subsref and use the built-in method instead. This would be equivalent to T1(1), but ignoring whatever the class defined for that syntax. Similarly for subsasgn, which is the subscripted assignment operation T1(2)=T2. This allowed the creation and use of arrays of a class.

However, this seems to no longer work. Maybe it is related to the classdef-style classes, as the last time I used the trick above was before those were introduced.

I would suggest that you use cell arrays for this (even if the above still worked, I would not recommend it).

^{* Note that table is a custom class, you can edit table to see the source code.}

How to create table array in MATLAB?

2 Answers2