slow 'eval' function - maybe pointers would do?

[Guido Walter Pettinari]

Hi everybody!

I need to assign values to a series of variables with numbered names,  
such as

ks_1 = ... ;
ks_2 = ... ;
...
ks_N = ... ;

where N is big and is determined at runtime. I do not want to use a  
vector named 'ks' such that ks(i) = ks_i and so on. Therefore, I used  
the 'eval' function in this way:

for i=1:N
   eval ( [ 'k', int2str(i), ' = ... ;' ] );
endfor

However, using 'eval' the execution time of my loop increases ~6 fold.  
To test this behaviour, please try to run the following script:

tic();
for i=1:100000   sin(2);   endfor
toc()

tic();
for i=1:100000   eval ( 'sin(2);' );   endfor
toc()

On my machine, the output is:

Elapsed time is 0.8 seconds.
Elapsed time is 5 seconds.

Could you please suggest a more performance-friendly workaround?  
Actually, my numbered variables are fields of a structure (es.  
struct.k_1, struct.k_2 ... ); I thought that one could solve the  
problem by using pointers to access them, but I could not find support  
for pointers in Octave.

Thank you,

Guido