A structure can be used as a sort of hash table:
>> foo.('one')=1
foo =
one: 1
>> foo.('two')=2;
>> x = 'two';
>> foo.(x)
ans =
2
To query whether a structure contains a particular field (key), use isfield:
>> isfield(foo,'two')
ans =
1
The disadvantage of this scheme is that only strings that are also valid Matlab variable names can be used as keys. For instance:
>> foo.('_bar')=99;
??? Invalid field name: '_bar'.
To get around this restriction, use one of the solutions in the question linked by Oli.
