# MAT.jl or HDF5.jl?
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/mat-jl-or-hdf5-jl/7075
**Category:** New to Julia
**Tags:** matlab
**Created:** [November 14, 2017, 7:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/mat-jl-or-hdf5-jl/7075 "2017-11-14T19:06:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@airpmb](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/airpmb)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2017, 7:06pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/mat-jl-or-hdf5-jl/7075/1 "2017-11-14T19:06:15Z")
It’s not obvious which of these one should reach for first. I imagine the answer may be “it depends” but supposing you just have a `.mat` file drop in your lap what do you try first?
---
### Author:  [@airpmb](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/airpmb)
#### Post date: [November 14, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/mat-jl-or-hdf5-jl/7075/2 "2017-11-14T19:42:27Z")
Answering myself (sort of): `MAT.jl` worked on the file I’m working with currently, FWIW. Ideally for my current use case I’d like to have similar behavior to MATLAB’s `load` command, i.e. create/update variables in the workspace. I found that something like the following seems to do that:
```julia
using MAT
data = matread(fname)
for k in keys(data)
eval(parse("$k = data[\"$k\"]"))
end
```
I expect there’s a smarter way to do this so it can be put in a function, is safer, etc. Anyhow I’m guessing this is a common use case and someone has a better way.
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2017, 7:35am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/mat-jl-or-hdf5-jl/7075/3 "2017-11-15T07:35:06Z")
FWIW, I would ingest the data in whatever format it is provided in, and from that point on use
[https://github.com/simonster/JLD2.jl](https://github.com/simonster/JLD2.jl)
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### Author:  [@mzaffalon](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mzaffalon)
#### Post date: [November 15, 2017, 3:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/mat-jl-or-hdf5-jl/7075/4 "2017-11-15T15:21:55Z")
If I understand correctly, the OP wants to load a `.mat` file: she is not asking for saving data.