Is it possible to have a file that changes it name depending on another variable?

Hello,

I was wondering if it was possible to have a file name that changes depending on another variable, this being done in App Designer. For example, I have a Patient ID that is randomly generated and I would like a file saved with that Patient ID (ex: Patient ID = # , all of that patient information is then saved under "Patient ID #. mat". Currently my code is this and it just rewrites over Patient ID.

% Button pushed function: SaveButton
        function SaveButtonPushed(app, event)
        PatientID = app.PatientIDEditField.Value;
        FirstName = app.FirstName;
        LastName = app.LastName;
        Weight = app.Weight;
        Height = app.Height;
        DOB = app.DOB;
        save('PatientID.mat','PatientID','FirstName','LastName','Weight','Height','DOB')
        end

Answer 1

[Les Beckham]

Try this:

% Button pushed function: SaveButton
        function SaveButtonPushed(app, event)
        PatientID = app.PatientIDEditField.Value;
        FirstName = app.FirstName;
        LastName = app.LastName;
        Weight = app.Weight;
        Height = app.Height;
        DOB = app.DOB;
        filename = sprintf('PatientID%s.mat', PatientID);
        save(filename,'PatientID','FirstName','LastName','Weight','Height','DOB')
        end

[Emily Czopek]

So it appears like this:

So it did work creating the new files, but would it be possible to have it with the numbers? I think I might've not been very clear about that in the original question. I have it so the Patient ID is a randomly generated number with the code below

 % Button pushed function: GeneratePatientIDButton
        function GeneratePatientIDButtonPushed(app, event)
            ID = randi(1000); 
            app.PatientID = ID;
            app.PatientIDEditField.Value = app.PatientID ;
        end

and then lets say it gives me 88 for the Patient ID, would I be able to have the file name as PatientID88.mat? Thank you for the response!

[Les Beckham]

If you are using a number to generate your filename instead of a string, change the %s in the sprintf call to %d. Your original question showed the PatientID as being extracted from the value field of an EditField which is a string. This is why I used %s in my answer. So, something like this:

 % Button pushed function: GeneratePatientIDButton
        function GeneratePatientIDButtonPushed(app, event)
            ID = randi(1000); 
            app.PatientID = ID;
            app.PatientIDEditField.Value = app.PatientID ;
            filename = sprintf('PatientID%d', ID);
            if ~exist(filename, 'file')
                save(filename,'ID');
            else
                error('%s already exists.  Try again.', filename)
            end
        end

Note that I added a check to make sure that a file for that patientID doesn't already exist, just to be safe. You may or may not need that for your use case.

[Emily Czopek]

Thank you so much for your help! I was able to get it to work.

[Les Beckham]

You are quite welcome.