MATLAB Programming Fundamentals - MathWorks

With cell arrays or structures, you do not have the same flexibility to use named or

numeric indexing.

• With a cell array, you must use strcmp to find desired named data, and then you can
  index into the array.


• With a scalar structure or structure array, it is not possible to refer to a field by
  number. Furthermore, with a scalar structure, you cannot easily select a subset of
  variables or a subset of observations. With a structure array, you can select a subset of
  observations, but you cannot select a subset of variables.


• With a table, you can access data by named index or by numeric index. Furthermore,
  you can easily select a subset of variables and a subset of rows.

For more information on table indexing, see “Access Data in a Table” on page 9-44.

Use Table Properties to Store Metadata

In addition to storing data, tables have properties to store metadata, such as variable

names, row names, descriptions, and variable units. You can access a property using

T.Properties.PropName, where T is the name of the table and PropName is one of the

table properties.

For example, add a table description, variable descriptions, and variable units for Age.

T.Properties.Description = 'Simulated Patient Data';

T.Properties.VariableDescriptions = ...

{'Male or Female' ...

'' ...

'true or false' ...

'Systolic/Diastolic'};

T.Properties.VariableUnits{'Age'} = 'Yrs';

Individual empty character vectors within the cell array for VariableDescriptions

indicate that the corresponding variable does not have a description. For more

information, see the Properties section of table.

To print a table summary, use the summary function.

summary(T)

Description: Simulated Patient Data

9 Tables