Indexing cell arrays with strings

Hello,

I find myself lately wanting to use something like a cell array whose indexes are strings, like a named list in R but multidimensional.

Say I have raw and processed data from 10 subjects recorded with Method A and Method B.

I would like to access my data as follows:

MyData{7,'RawData','MethodB'} = value

Alternatively, using struct array:

MyData(7,'RawData').MethodB = value

Of course it is arbitrary that ’RawData’ is an index and the MethodB is a field and it could have been the other way around.

I thought using a map container:

M = containers.Map;
M('RawData') = 1; M('ProcessedData') = 2;
M('MethodA') = 1; M('MethodB') = 2;

Then I could access my data using:

MyData{7,M('RawData'),M('MethodB')} = value

Since it is not a very neat solution, any better thoughts on this issue?

Thank you