table on workspace isn't recognized as table

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Hi,
I have a question that puzzles me.
On my workspace I have a table as such:
name value
left_precentral_betas 25x8 table
and this is how I created it:
left_precentral_betas = table(left_precentral(:,1),left_precentral(:,2),left_precentral(:,3)...
,left_precentral(:,4),left_precentral(:,5),left_precentral(:,6),...
left_precentral(:,7),left_precentral(:,8), 'VariableNames',...
{'Right Palm Medial', 'Right Back Medial','Left Palm Medial',...
'Left Back Medial','Right Palm Lateral','Right Back Lateral'...
,'Left Palm Lateral','Left Back Lateral'}) ;
yet I can't use writetable function:
writetable(left_precentral_betas,[PATHOUT,'left_motor.txt']);
I get this error:
Error using writetable (line 139)
First argument must be a table.
istable(left_precentral_betas);
gives me 0. If it's not a table, why it's defined as table in my workspace?
If I'm defining the table wrongly, why do I have it as table in my workspace?
and how can I write or save this table/non table as .txt?
Kind regards,
Hatice
  6 Comments
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 4 Feb 2020
You should remove spm12\external\fieldtrip\compat\matlablt2013b from your path . It is intended as compatibility functions for use with versions before R2013b.
Hatice Sahin
Hatice Sahin on 5 Feb 2020
I removed it from the path and it works perfect now. Thank you very much!

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Accepted Answer

Guillaume
Guillaume on 4 Feb 2020
"Soo, I assume I should have written class(data)"
No, if you'd followed my instruction, when the error occured matlab should have entered the debugger in the workspace of writable (because of the dbstop if error you issued earlier). Within the workspace of writetable, your original variables don't exist and the table is called T. At least, in R2019b and I assume in previous versions as well.
Anyway, as the which shows, the problem is that the fieldtrip toolbox overrides the built-in istable with its own incompatible version.
From other questions I've seen here, the fieldtrip toolbox has a nasty habit of overriding matlab built-in functions with its own incompatible version. isrow was a particular nasty one I've seen as it prevented proper matlab startup.

More Answers (2)

Subhadeep Koley
Subhadeep Koley on 4 Feb 2020
As far as my knowledge goes MATLAB does not support Blank Space in variable names. It can only contain letters, numbers or underscore. Blank spaces or symbols are not allowed. Therefore it should throw error when you are passing 'Right Palm Medial' as a variable name.
Give the below code a try. I'm not getting any error in my end with the code below.
clc;
% 20-by-20 Random data
left_precentral = rand(20, 20);
% Make the table
left_precentral_betas = table(left_precentral(:, 1), left_precentral(:, 2), left_precentral(:, 3),...
left_precentral(:, 4), left_precentral(:, 5), left_precentral(:, 6),...
left_precentral(:, 7), left_precentral(:, 8), 'VariableNames',...
{'RightPalmMedial', 'RightBackMedial', 'LeftPalmMedial',...
'LeftBackMedial', 'RightPalmLateral', 'RightBackLateral',...
'LeftPalmLateral', 'LeftBackLateral'});
% Write the table
writetable(left_precentral_betas, [PATHOUT, 'left_motor.txt']);
  4 Comments
Subhadeep Koley
Subhadeep Koley on 5 Feb 2020
@ Walter Roberson I did not knew about this change. Thanks for letting me know :)
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 5 Feb 2020
In order to use non-identifiers, you need to use dynamic field name syntax, or else pass the variable name as the second index
T.('Right Palm Media')
Or
T{:, 'Right Palm Media'}
But it is supported for R2019b onwards.

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Daniel M
Daniel M on 24 Apr 2020
The issue is that you likely added the entire Fieldtrip toolbox to your path, which is not recommended. I am currently using Fieldtrip for some analysis, and it does not override the istable function in its default behaviour.
Fieldtrip does not recommend adding the whole toolbox to your path. Just run the function ft_defaults.m and it will do it properly for you.
Try it by doing:
if isempty(which('ft_preprocessing'))
restoredefaultpath
startup;
ft_dir = path/to/main/fieldtrip/folder;
run(fullfile(ft_dir,'ft_defaults.m'));
end
The purpose of the if statement is so that you don't need to alter your path everytime you run your script, since this is a time-expensive process.
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