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Re: String as a variable name

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg100277] Re: String as a variable name
• From: "A. B." <functionalcoatings at gmail.com>
• Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 06:31:40 -0400 (EDT)

I found it: I forgot to wrap Evaluate around the assignment. This works:

Symbol["variable"<>"1"]//Evaluate=10

Many thanks.

A.B.






> In a data analysis package I use often, a facility is provided for
> substituting a string for the name of a variable. Quoting from the user
> manual:
> 
> "String Substitution Using $:
> Wherever Igor expects the literal name of an operand, such as the name of a
> wave, you can instead provide a string expression preceded by the $ character.
> The $ character tells Igor to evaluate the string expression and substitute
> that value as the name it expected."
> 
> For example, I can write:
> VariableName="variable"+"1"
> $variableName=10,
> 
> the variable whose name is variable1 would then be assigned the value 10.
> 
> I was looking for an equivalent in Mathematica. I tried looking into the
> Symbol function, but haven't found a way to use it for this purpose. Thus,
> something like:
> 
> Symbol["variable"<>"1"]=10
> 
> does not work.
> 
> I sometimes need to create variables during the execution of a program whose
> names are made up from concatenated strings and I need to be able to assign
> values to them.
> 
> Any idea ?
> 
> A.B.