How to read csv files in matlab as you would in R?

I have a data set that is saved as a .csv file that looks like the following:

Name,Age,Password
John,9,\i1iiu1h8
Kelly,20,\771jk8
Bob,33,\kljhjj

In R I could open this file by the following:

X = read.csv("file.csv",header=TRUE)

Is there a default command in Matlab that reads .csv files with both numeric and string variables? csvread seems to only like numeric variables.

One step further, in R I could use the attach function to create variables with associated with teh columns and columns headers of the data set, i.e.,

attach(X)

Is there something similar in Matlab?