The one thing you did NOT try was
save(name)
name is a variable, that contains a file name. Use it as such.
When you do this:
save name
MATLAB does create a mat file. The name of that file will be name.mat. Look in your directory.
This happens because MATLAB functions can also be used as commands. When you do so, MATLAB actually passes the string 'name' to the save function, as if you had executed
save('name')
See that this is NOT the same as passing the contents of the VARIABLE name to save. When you use a function as a command, it takes whatever follows the command as literal text, a string, and passes that to your chosen function.
