Structure items as vectors?

[Schirmacher, Rolf]

Hello,

I want to use structured information for numerical computations. I have a
structure like

octave.exe> some.data.structure(1).item = 1;
octave.exe> some.data.structure(2).item = 2;

and later on, I want to do calculations with a vector of "item"s. What I get
is a list like

octave.exe> some.data.structure.item
ans =

(,
  [1] =  1
  [2] =  2
,)

octave.exe> some.data.structure(:).item
ans =

(,
  [1] =  1
  [2] =  2
,)


On the other hand, I can access the individual elements as scalars like

octave.exe> some.data.structure(1).item
ans =  1


How can I retrive the data as a vector, i.e. overcome such errors most
easily? 

octave.exe> items_doubled = 2 .* some.data.structure(:).item
error: binary operator `.*' not implemented for `scalar' by `cs-list'
operations
error: evaluating binary operator `.*' near line 59, column 19
error: evaluating assignment expression near line 59, column 15


Thanks in advance,

Rolf