Splitting a long string into individual variables

Hello--

I've got a long string of websites that looks like this:

"https://stgeorge"

"https://stjoseph"

"https://stlouis"

I've got them all as a string in variable X. I'm trying to use them with the webread command which requires that they be individual, so I'm looking for a way to split them all into their own variables or otherwise produce a way which I can collect data from all of the sites.

Any help is much appreciated! thanks!

[madhan ravi]

What‘s your expected result? State it explicitly to avoid confusions.

[Walter Roberson]

Do you mean that you have aa nonscalar string object ? Or aa character vector with aa delimiter ?

[KSSV]

IS your vaiable a cell? If so you can use X{1} ..etc.

[Calvin Spangler Young]

I believe I have a nonscalar string. I'm trying to build something with which can pull data off of craigs list for a stats project on average prices in different places.

Expected result:

Something which allows me to do the following:

webread('https://stgeorge.craigslist.org')
webread('https://stjoseph.craigslist.org')
webread('https://stlouis.craigslist.org')

Is there some way to reference each line in a string differently? Or otherwise handle this without typing out all of the different sites?

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

"... so I'm looking for a way to split them all into their own variables"

That would not be a good approach. Read this to know why:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

"or otherwise produce a way which I can collect data from all of the sites."

Sure, that is easy! Just use a loop and basic, efficient indexing:

S = ["https://stgeorge", "https://stjoseph", "https://stlouis"];
N = numel(S);
C = cell(1,N);
for k = 1:N
    C{k} = webread(S(k));
end

[madhan ravi]

If so couldn't it be like:

C=arrayfun(@(x) webread(x),S,'un',0)

Just curious.

[Stephen23]

@madhan ravi: you are right, that should also work (but I have not tried it). Also:

C = arrayfun(@webread, S,'uni',0)

[madhan ravi]

@Stephen Cobeldick: thanks for clarifying.

[Calvin Spangler Young]

Thanks! Appreciate the help, this looks like it'll work great