Set function workspace to base in MATLAB

I have a rather bulky program that I've been running as a script from the MATLAB command line. I decided to clean it up a bit with some nested functions (I need to keep everything in one file), but in order for that to work it required me to also make the program itself a function. As a result, the program no longer runs in the base workspace like it did when it was a script. This means I no longer have access to the dozens of useful variables that used to remain after the program runs, which are important for extra calculations and information about the run.

The suggested workarounds I can find are to use assignin, evalin, define the variables as global, or set the output in the definition of the now function-ized program. None of these solutions appeal to me, however, and I would really like to find a way to force the workspace itself to base. Does any such workaround exist? Or is there any other way to do this that doesn't require me to manually define or label each specific variable I want to get out of the function?

assignin

evalin

save('workspace');

load('workspace');

void = onCleanup(@variables2workspace);

variables2workspace

void

2 Answers
2

Functions should define clearly input and output variables. Organizing the code differently will be much more difficult to understand and to modify later on. In the end, it will most likely cost you more time to work with an unorthodox style than investing in some restructuring.

If you have a huge number of output variables, I would suggest organizing them in structure arrays, which might be easy to handle as output variables.

The only untidy workaround I can imagine would use whos, assignin and eval:

function your_function()
x = 'hello' ;
y = 'world' ;

variables = whos ;
for k=1:length(variables)
assignin('base',variables(k).name,eval(variables(k).name))
end
end


But I doubt that this will help with the aim to clean up your program. As mentioned above I suggest ordering things manually in structures:

function out = your_function()
x = 'hello' ;
y = 'world' ;

out.x = x ;
out.y = y ;
end


eval

eval

eval

If the function you would like to define are simple and have a single output, one option is to use anonymous functions.

Another option is to store all the variable you would like to use afterwards in a struct and have your big function return this struct as an output.

struct

struct

function AllVariables = GlobalFunction(varargin);
% bunch of stuff

AllVariables= struct('Variable1', Variable1, 'Variable2', Variable2, …);
end


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