How to call child static method from parent static method

I have a parent class

classdef AbstractPersonClass
    properties (Abstract, Access = public)
    end
    
    methods (Abstract, Access = protected, Static)
        MyNameIs();
    end
    
    methods (Access = public, Static)
        function [] = Greet()            
            personName = obj.MyNameIs();
            fprintf(1, "Hi I am %s. \n", personName);
        end
    end
end

and a child class

classdef George < AbstractPersonClass     
    methods (Access = protected, Static)
        function [name] = MyNameIs()
            name = "George Smith";
        end
    end
end

You can run this by calling

George.Greet();

The method Greet in the parent class does not work because

personName = obj.MyNameIs();

is wrong, because I can't use obj in a static method.

I know that it would work if it the the method was not static, but I need it static.

Other possibility would be to make Greet abstract and implement it in each child class using child class name instead of the obj, but this method would be the same in each class, so I don't like this solution.

Is there any way to make Greet method work, while keeping it static and in the parent class?.

[Catalytic]

I know that it would work if it the the method was not static, but I need it static.

I am very skeptical of this. Why would you absolutely need that? For that matter, why would you have a sub-class representing an individual person named "George"? The reason one defines a class is because you foresee many possible instances of that class being needed in your code. Do you really expect to have many George's running around in your application?

It makes much more sense to have a class organization where the name is a property of the class, like -

classdef PersonClass

    properties
       name 
    end
    
    methods 
        function [] = Greet(obj)   
            disp("Hi, I am "+obj.name);
        end
    end
end

Then you do things like -

person=PersonClass("George");
person.Greet()

This way, you don't even need to define subclasses. If you only want certain people/names to be possible, you could make this an enumeration class -

classdef PersonClass

    enumeration
       George, Frank,Susan
    end
    
    methods 
        function Greet(obj)   
            disp("Hi, I am "+char(obj));
        end
    end
end

which would work very similarly -

person=PersonClass.George;
person.Greet()

Answer 1

[Matt J]

One way:

function Greet(classname)
  personName=feval(classname+".MyNameIs");
  ...
end

and then call as

AbstractPersonClass.Greet("George")

[Pavel Benes]

Thank you for your answer, I will wait, if there will be some other answer, without feval, which I am trying to avoid and additional parameters for the Greet function. But this could be used if there won't be "nicer" solution. I have been trying to do somethign like this. I have been trying to get the name of the object from the method, so there would be no additional parameter for the Greet method. But it was returning AbstractPersonClass instead of George, so I have decided to ask on forums, that maybe it is something trivial that I don't know (I'm pretty new to OOP). Now I see that this is not something so trivial, if feval is needed.

I will wait some time and if nothing "better" appears I will accept this answer, thank you.

[Thomas Michiels]

You are completely right, this is something trivial... In every programming language except matlab

[Walter Roberson]

Thomas:

How would you do this in Prolog? Or Pascal? Or SNOBOL? Or Forth?

[Thomas Michiels]

for pascal:

https://www.educative.io/edpresso/what-are-static-class-methods-in-pascal

prolog is not an OOP oriented language, and thus has not have these concepts, which makes this an irrelevant question as you would not need it, as you are using different programming paradigms. (Matlab does have extensive OOP support, just with many little flaws)

same for SNOBOL, i see a pattern coming up, so let's update my statement:

In every programming language WHERE YOU CAN USE OOP except matlab

[Walter Roberson]

That link is to Object Pascal, not Pascal.