Creating a matrix from user input

I am a first year engineering student trying to answer a question similar to this:

• specify the number of shelves in a cupboard
• specify the number of spaces on each shelf
• for each space, specify its dimensions (width, height and depth)
• for each space, specify its use (food, plates or cutlery)
• for each space, specify the x and y coordinate on its given shelf.

[Adam]

And what part of it is causing trouble? What have you done so far?

[Lucy Doyle]

I haven't done anything so far, do you have any advice as to how I can solve this problem based on unknown user inputs?

[David Fletcher]

They're not unknown as such, I imagine you design a script that will input those criteria (any arbitrary input will do) and save them in a suitable structure (I don't think it will be a matrix though)

[Bob Thompson]

I'm a little confused about the context of these questions, so I can't give a particularly specific answer. If you're just looking to have the user input the values themselves then you can use the input() command, and store the information as David mentioned. Because the data all seems to be about a specific object I would suggest using a structure variable type.

numshelf = input('specify the number of shelves in a cupboard: ');
shelf = struct('numshel',numshelf);
[shelf.numspace] = input('specify the number of spaces on each shelf: ');

You can go multiple layers deep if you would like (shelf.space(1).dim) and possibly couple that with a for loop to add dimensions for different characteristics, or you could also just do a matrix with values (shelf.dim = matrix of size numberofspaces X numberofdimensions). Plenty of options to choose from.