You might be interested in reading about non-scalar structures:
Method one: setfield and getfield:
Both setfield and getfield work with an arbitrary depth of nested structures (and indexing), all you need to do is supply each fieldname as an input (and when using setfield also with the data at the end):
>> S = struct();
>> S = setfield(S,'child1','child2','something');
>> S = setfield(S,'child1','hello1','world2','different');
>> S.child1.child2
ans = something
>> S.child1.hello1.world2
ans = different
In your case (where the fieldnames are in a cell array) you can supply them as a comma-separated list with the data variable at the end:
setfield(S,fields{:},data)
Method two: recursive function:
If you really are determined to do-it-yourself (which I do not recommend), then something like this should get you started. It adds all required substructures and allocates the data at the end:
function S = recfield(S,data,varargin)
S = recfun(S,data,varargin{1},varargin(2:end));
end
function S = recfun(S,data,fld,C)
if isempty(C)
S.(fld) = data;
else
if ~isfield(S,fld)
S.(fld) = struct();
end
S.(fld) = recfun(S.(fld),data,C{1},C(2:end));
end
end
And in use:
>> S = struct();
>> S = recfield(S,'something','child1','child2');
>> S = recfield(S,'different','child1','hello1','world2');
>> S.child1.child2
ans = something
>> S.child1.hello1.world2
ans = different
Note that it will simply overwrite any existing data in the same location.
