Calling ga creation functions independently

Before running ga(), I would like to do some pre-analysis of the initial population. To this end, is it possible to call the default creation functions used by ga() as independent stand-alone functions?

[Stephen23]

Have you tried accessing either of them?:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/gads/genetic-algorithm-options.html#f14223

Are they on the MATLAB path, or in a private directory?

[Matt J]

Interestingly, gacreationuniform() is accessible, but requires input arguments that only ga() knows how to set up.

Answer 1

[Matt J]

Here's one method which uses a dummy call to ga() with an OutputFcn. I'm still interested to know if there's a more direct way, however.

function pop=gaPopulation(varargin)
%  pop=gaPopulation(varargin)
%
%Get the initial population constructed by ga(varargin{:}).

        if numel(varargin) && ...
          (isa(varargin{end}, 'optim.options.GaOptions') || isstruct(varargin{end}) )

           opts=varargin{end};

           if isstruct(opts)
               opts=gaoptimset(opts,'OutputFcn',@outputfcn);
           else
            opts=optimoptions(opts,'OutputFcn',@outputfcn,'Display','none');
           end
           varargin(end)=[];
        else
           opts=optimoptions(@ga,'OutputFcn',@outputfcn,'Display','none');
        end

         varargin(end+1:10)={[]};

   pop=[];

   ga(varargin{:},opts);

      function   [state,options,optchanged] = outputfcn(options, state,flag)
       optchanged=false;
        if strcmp(flag,'init')
            pop=state.Population;
            state.StopFlag='stop';
        end

      end

 end