How to allow a GUI user to defined a variable name

I've written a GUI that loads data from a file, applies various treatments to said data based upon what uicontrols the user chooses to use, and then saves the treated data as a variable in a .mat file to a user specified folder.

However, I have found it desireable to allow the user to specify the variable name before saving to the folder.

My initial idea was to ask the user for their prefered name and then assign the value to that using eval.

[filename,foldername] = uigetfile;
[~,myData] = loadHSI(fullfile(folder,file));            % This function loads the data from an unusual format

% Apply treatments
% ................

newName = char(inputdlg('What would you like to call the variable?'));

eval(sprintf('%s = TreatedData;',newName));
[newFile,newPath] = uiputfile('*','Save As:');
save(fullfile(newPath,newFile),sprintf('%s',newName))

Aside from being bad practice to use eval like that (a habit i've found difficult to break), this is not possible, as it would require dynamically adding a variable to a static workspace. My question then is: Is there any work around for allowing a user to define the name of a variable before being saved by a gui?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

temp.(variableName) = value
save(filename, '-struct', 'temp')

[Tiarnan Murphy]

Thanks, Walter. I'd considered storing it in a struct, but had wanted to keep it as a plain old variable. Admittedly, it's not that big a deal to turn it back, I suppose.

[Tiarnan Murphy]

My bad actually, that is exactly what I wanted. Thanks again.

[Stephen23]

"Aside from being bad practice to use eval like that (a habit i've found difficult to break)..."

This is exactly why you should break with the bad habit of using eval: you can easily write simpler, neater, more efficient code which wastes less of your time writing it.

Do not get stuck thinking "I cannot think of any other way to solve this": asking on this forum is always a good approach, or do some reading on the topic:

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