How to Save a File with a New Exetesion?

Imagine I have the variable below:

B = [1 2 3];
save(‘B’, ‘B’);

When I save variable B, MATLAB creates a file named B.mat. Is there any way to replace its extension with another word (e.g., B.FFF)? I want to do it to be able to find and sort files with such extension easier.

Answer 1

[Adam]

The obvious

save( 'B.fff', 'B' );

works fine (though obviously better with a full path as always), but as John points out, loading this in the standard way will not work, though

load( 'B.fff', '-mat' )

will do. I have done this myself (though with more meaningful extensions!) on a few occasions for saving data files for a user where it isn't important to the user what type of file it is and I prefer to give my own extension to define the 'type' of file as people sometimes do with XML files.

Purely from a point of view of loading and saving in Matlab there is no obvious reason to not use .mat, it's just a preference for me for files a user will interact with - e.g. if they have 3 different files for parameters of different things then I like to give each an extension related to the type of parameters they store.

[Jan]

+1. Exactly. You cal load e.g. .fig-files using this method also.

Answer 2

[John D'Errico]

Well, I suppose you could try. But then MATLAB would be unable to access that file, since it needs to be a .mat file. If the extension is not .mat, then MATLAB will assume the file is saved as a simple ascii text file.

Better is to put the tag into the name. B_FFF, or FFF_B. The latter is better, since a simple sort will bring all those names together, just as you wish.