How may I dynamically refer to a loaded mat array to modify or save it

I am trying to write a simple piece of code where I provide a function with a list name (as a string) and a new string to add to the list (also a string). It will then load that library, add it to the list, sort it, and re-save it. I seem to be getting stuck how to dynamically reference the list name. I desire to do this so that I may add new entries to many other lists I have on my computer quickly with the console.

function addtolist(list,string)

load([list '.mat']);  %%%this line works fine

list = vertcat([list '.mat'],string); %%%this line is incorrect

list = sort(list);

save([list '.mat']); %%%this line also incorrectly references the cultures list 

end

INPUT: addtolist('Cultures','Armenian') OUTPUT: Nothing (old file is overwritten with line of data)

Thanks in advance for any help here,

William

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_can_I_create_variables_A1.2C_A2.2C....2CA10_in_a_loop.3F

In particular use

filename = [list '.mat']
data = load(filename);
data.(list) = sort([data.(list); {string}]);
save(filename, 'data', '-struct');

I explicitly used cell array form as vertcat() of a char array does not work if the new item is not the same width but there is no problem with cell arrays.

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/string-evaluation.html

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

Answer 3

[Will Kinsman]

The code ended up looking like this and used the eval() function

function addtolist(list,string)

filename = [list '.mat'];
data = load(filename);
data = sort([data.(list); {string}]);

eval([list '= data']);
save(list,list);

I do understand the danger of using dynamically referenced variables, however this is only 5 lines of code and is meant to be used as quick tool entirely independent of all other code. Thank you for the help!

[Stephen23]

Hopefully no one will believe that it is a good solution. Please read the better answers below.