How do I use the who command within a function

I am trying to use the who command within a function to make a list of the variables in the current workspace that match a given string.

Here is my little test function to get this portion working. In my case there are 6 variables that match the string so test should return "6". However, I always get 0. If I comment out the function line and run it as a script, it works fine. Is there a way to get the who command within a function to generate a list of variables from the current workspace?

function[test] = myfun()
    %dev = 'R_A_bot';
    %keys = strcat('IV','*',dev,'*');
    vars = who ('IV*R_A_bot*');

      test = length(vars);

Thank you.

Answer 1

[Matt Fig]

When a function is running, the current workspace is the workspace of the function. That is just how it works.

Why not just keep it as a script?

If you must have a function for some reason, you can use this line, with either 'caller' or 'base' depending.

vars = evalin('caller','who (''IV*R_A_bot*'')');

[Becca]

Thank you, that worked.

That was just a snippet of code I wrote trying to solve the problem. I have several different scripts that I change a little here, a little there for each run. I am making each a function so I can choose which "scripts" to call and only have to change one thing and pass it through.

For example, in that one I will eventually pass in dev and assemble "keys" to use as the expression in who. Dev could be passed into say the 4 functions I run on that dataset.