Creating new arrays in a Table

Question

I have a 3x6 matrix a:

a = {{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6}, {7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12}, {13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 
   18}}

What I want is to end up with 6 1x3 arrays,

{miniOut, minimaOut, curvaturesMiniOut, maxiOut, maximaOut, curvaturesMaxiOut}

such that miniOut = {1,7,13}, minimaOut = {2,8,14} etc.

My attempt is:

stuff = Table[{miniOut[[n]], minimaOut[[n]], curvaturesMiniOut[[n]], 
    maxiOut[[n]], maximaOut[[n]], curvaturesMaxiOut[[n]]} = 
   a[[n]], {n, 1, Length[a]}]

But it says

Symbol miniOut in part assignment does not have an immediate value.

and the same for the other variables.

Do I need to pre-define the arrays in advance and set all the elements to 0?

Answer 1

It seems you are looking to store each column of a into separate variables. There is no need to do this element-wise. The easiest way is to use Transpose on a so that the columns become rows: in other words, the columns become the elements at level 1 in Transpose[a]. Then you can assign them all simultaneously:

{miniOut, minimaOut, curvaturesMiniOut, maxiOut, maximaOut, curvaturesMaxiOut} = Transpose[a]