Accessing variable by string name

@arne.b has a good answer.

In your case you can also do that in matlab:

a=load('filename.mat')
x=a.('variable_name')

>> foo = 3.14; name = 'foo'; eval(name)

foo =

    3.1400

The above works in MATLAB, and Scilab's documentation says it also has an eval function. Not sure if I understood you correctly, though.