A Function to Un-Nest Nested Structures in MATLAB
So I’m flying back from Shanghai right now, (youalreadyknow it’s business class) and I decided to business-expense-splurge for the in-flight wifi, which is about as fast as a snail in the process of peacefully passing away. This means the only scrap of entertainment I can garner from my laptop is writing code in MATLAB. Writing fuckaround code in a pretend programming language in a rickety IDE has a provided surprising source of succor; if you were here you’d know it too because you’d notice I have been sitting FOR HOURS WITHOUT MY SEATBELT ON because I was simply too enraptured by the alternating tides of hate and happiness that MATLAB so easily exerts on the user.
Basically, I’m working on a GUI that allows a user to programmatically create test limits for test data, while also allowing the user to efficiently adjust the limits where our absurd test data manages to invalidate centuries of statistical knowledge. This requires allowing the user to load a specific test from within an absurdly packaged data file which comes from a test system written by someone who clearly much prefers obfuscating and hiding things over effective data collection WHICH in turn means deeply and variably nested structures. Like 400-megabyte-CSV, stuck-in-limbo-with-Leonardio-DiCaprio, booger-that-you-can-feel-but-after-several-embarrassing-red-lights-you-cannot-remove levels deep.
Therefore, after careful perusal of mathworks, I wrote the following code. It uses recursion to return an array of strings describing each and every branch of a struct, down to the twig. It is surely my greatest accomplishment thus far.
function allfields=fieldnamesr(struct);
% FIELDNAMESR recursively explores the depths of nested structs To find all
% possible branches
% fuck yeah recursion
fields=fieldnames(struct); %are there any field names?
idx=1; %increment variable
for i=1:1:size(fields,1) %for all field names
if isstruct(struct.(fields{i})) %see if that field name itself is a structure
temp=structRecurrr(struct.(fields{i})); %if also structure, then we must go deeper!
for j=1:1:length(temp) %for all returned values
allfields{idx,1}=sprintf('%s.%s',fields{i},temp{j}); %return a string containing returned values
idx=idx+1; %increment
end
else
allfields{idx}=fields{i}; %if field name not struct, then we are at bottom level
idx=idx+1; %increment
end
end
Much like worried parents will fuss over a child before sending them off into the world, I fidgeted over the details of this lil guy, attempting to delay the inevitable departure, filled with pride and worry at the rigors he’ll face out in the real world. Unlike most worried parents, I eventually said “fuck it,” and dropped this fucker off at the local Fedex, to be shipped cross country in a large cardboard box.
