Problem with importdata with filename obtained two different ways

Hello,

I am trying to open a data file which contains a number in the file name. As this number keeps changing, I want to come up with the file name using string concatenation. The string concatenation works fine and I get the file name. But, when I try to load the file (tried commands load and importdata) using the obtained file name, I get the error saying "??? Error using ==> importdata at 123 Unable to open file." If I explicitly give the file name then everything works fine. I compared the file name obtained using concatenation with that of actual file name and I get '1'. I am not sure what is going wrong. Here is the code

STR1 = {'TEMP'};
STR2 = {'200'};
STR3 = {'.DAT'};
filename1 = strcat(STR1,STR2,STR3);
filename2 = 'TEMP200.DAT';
%load filename;
A = importdata(filename2);
B = importdata(filename1);

Output is here

??? Error using ==> importdata at 123
Unable to open file.

Error in ==> Averaging at 16
B = importdata(filename2);

String comparison gives '1'

TF = strcmp(filename1,filename2)

TF =

       1

Any idea what is going wrong.

Thank you

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

I wouldn't even mess with cell arrays, but if you really want to, use sprintf() and char():

STR1 = {'TEMP'};
STR2 = {'200'};
STR3 = {'.DAT'};
filename1 = sprintf('%s%s%s', char(STR1), char(STR2), char(STR3))

Answer 2

[Naveen]

Thank you for the answer. But, I can't understand how it solves my problem of opening and reading the the files TEMP200.DAT, TEMP201.DAT, TEMP202.DAT, ------, TEMP300.DAT in a for loop.