Please vote if you want to have M-function in M-script

The issue is raised in http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/7685-m-function-in-a-m-script

Or a previous discussion http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/298837

Vote if you want to ask Mathworks to add this feature.

If you are AGAINST it, please vote on the other post. http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/7691-please-vote-if-you-do-not-want-to-have-m-function-in-m-script

If you DON't CARE, you can also vote. http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/7699-please-vote-if-you-don-t-care-to-have-m-function-in-m-script

Answer 1

[Jan]

The question is solved by R2016b: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/local-functions-in-scripts.html

Answer 2

[Kelly Kearney]

I support this wholeheartedly. I've seen the issue come up many times on the newsgroup, and yet I've never heard a convincing argument against it.

I consider myself very proficient in Matlab. When I write code, I think I'm far more attentive to making the code clean, readable, efficient, and robust than most people. I agree with the general opinion that most code belongs in functions, particularly code that is going to be reused by you, or distributed to others.

However, in my workflow, scripts have their own place. Usually, this involves wrapper scripts to set up input for, run, and analyze output from my main models. In this type of workflow, it's very handy to keep all variables in the base workspace so I can thoroughly analyze any variable at any time in the process. However, I often find myself wanting to add little functions to these scripts, which of course I can't do. I've become pretty adept at utilizing anonymous functions, but there's a limit to how much you can cram into a one-liner. So instead, I find my work folder littered with little one-off functions that are too specialized to be moved to my main library of functions (often specialized plots for data analysis, or utilities to reformat data in a very specific way), but a pain to wade through when I go back in search of a certain script I had written a few weeks ago.

It would be very useful to be able to add these little functions to the script instead. Nothing fancy, no nested functions or shared scope or anything like that, just a simple function with its own scope that can be called by the main script only.

[Fangjun Jiang]

Two thumbs (points too) up! I completely agree. What I want is the convenience!

Answer 3

[Jan]

No vote from me. I ever (edited: always) use functions due to the benefit of the separated workspace, which prevents the accidental modifications of variables used by the caller.

[Sean de Wolski]

Your use of "ever" is culturally interesting. Are you using it like: always, usually?

[Jan]

I meant "always", which I assume is "more" than "usually": not even one exception. "Ever" and "always" are translated to the same word "immer" in German.

I've learned English in the school for 2 years only, some posts in CSSM and here and some weeks abroad. I really hope that the quality of my replies does not suffer too much from my English. "If I please the debugger..." yielded to the most amused reactions - a naive translation of "wenn ich den Debugger bitte..." ("if I ask the debugger to...", but in German you cannot seriously "ask" a non-person).

However, I cannot compete with "plz give me ful program". ;-)

[Sean de Wolski]

Your English is excellent!

[Clayton Chu]

@Jan Simon - if variables were lexically scoped, namespace collision would not happen so much. One of my annoyances with MATLAB..