replace column name from a dataframe with his corresponding index

Hello, how can i replace a column name which is a string with the index of this column in a dataframe ?

In this case, i couldn't use :

featureNames      = cellfun(@str2num,featureNames)

since my column names are strings which don't contain values like '2' then i could convert it to num with str2num.

NB: featureNames is an array which contain column names

Example: the first column of my dataframe is 'TCGA-AXV6' and i want to set it to 1

Can someone help me fix this problem please ?

[dpb]

I don't see a problem -- you can reference by column index the same as by variable name.

Show us the exact code/data structure that is giving rise to the perceived need...