How to have matlab engine return value of variable in python

I currently use the following set of commands to load up a Matlab session in Python:

import matlab.engine 
eng = matlab.engine.start_matlab("-desktop")

I have become familiar with a few commands using this engine such as

eng.eval()
eng.cd()
eng.load()

Following the same pattern, if I have a variable in matlab named:

VariableName

I should like to call this variable directly using the engine and have its value return in a python compatible format. However, neither

eng.VariableName

nor

eng.VariableName()

works. For the first attempt I get the following output in my matlab session :

<matlab.engine.matlabengine.MatlabFunc at 0x113dde80>

Which is not very helpful.

Also, if I have a user-defined function already added to the matlab file path using addpath(), I should also like to call this function from python. If the function FunctionName can take in variable VariableName, then my intuition says that something like this:

eng.FunctionName(eng.VariableName)

should work. However it does not.

How can I 1) return the values of variables in my Python session directly from matlab (without using eng.eval) and 2) call user defined matlab functions and pass in user defined variables (again without utilizing eng.eval)??

Answer 1

[Robert Snoeberger]

1) Use eng.workspace['VariableName']. See here.

[i621148]

If using Spyer, there is an option in the Variable Explorer called Exclude unsupported types

that if unchecked will show all variable types on it.