separating x and y from an equation

after applying some mathematics I have an equation as a result in the form 2x - 3y^2. Now what I want to do is separate 2x and store it into one variable and 3y^2 and store it into another variable, is there any command to separate 2x and 3y^2 ?

[Greig]

Can you gives us some more details about what your data are and what you are doing/trying to achieve. As it stands you have given a very abstract description, which have a very simple solution, or a much more complicated one.

Answer 1

[Elias Gule]

%%USE regexp to split the string
  % 
  str = regexprep('2x-3y^2','(\d+)(\w+)','$1*$2');
  str = regexprep(str,'(\w+)(\^)','$1.$2');
  str = regexp(str,'-','split');

    % define values for x and y
    x = [];
    y = [];

    % store the values of x in a variable x_ and y in a variable y_
    evalin('base',['x_ = ' str{1} ';' 'y_ = ' str{2} ';']);  %%x_ and y_ will be created in the base
                                                             % workspace