I expect you'll just make your loading time worse but I'd use the matfile object to try this and see how it goes...
Start by making a copy of the first file in a new file so have a way to recover if having a huge file isn't the answer to your problems...
copyfile('brodata.mat','newbro.mat')
newObj=matfile('newbro.mat','Writeable','true');
d=dir('brodata*.mat');
for 2=1:length(d)
data=load d(i).name;
newObj.data=[newObj.data;data];
clear data
end
In all likelihood the above will run into memory issues as it does create a copy in memory
"data" above is a placeholder for your cell variable name in your files; use whatever it is.
You can -append to a .mat file, but only additional variables with save; if you use the same variable name it replaces that name, it does not add onto that array internally -- illustration:
>> whos -file new.mat
Name Size Bytes Class Attributes
c 4x2 6912 cell
>> c
c =
[100x2 double] [7.3638e+05]
[100x2 double] [7.3638e+05]
>> save new.mat c -append
>> whos -file new.mat
Name Size Bytes Class Attributes
c 2x2 3456 cell
>>
Net result is the 2x2 from memory replace the already existing 4x2 on file.
Only way I can think of to create larger arrays on file w/o holding in memory would be to create stream files (which don't support cell arrays well). Then you could do simple file system copy but you lose the existing data structure.
