dict

General purpose data storage object

Description

DICT is a general purpose data storage object similar to the DICT object in Python. Data is stored as key/value pairs. Keys and values can be any Matlab data type.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the following in the creation of this submission:
lookupTable
This submission has inspired the following:
Dictionary data structure

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a)
• Other requirements: Requires the new class support in Matlab 2008a.

[Dimitri Shvorob]

What are the advantages compared to built-in (and accessible from most Matlab versions) java.util.Hashtable?

[Doug Harriman]

The only advantage that I can see is that dict has a more natural Matlab interface. In my experience, accessing Java objects is not intuitive to those not experienced with programming Java. With a cleaner Matlab wrapping interface, the Java implementation would likely be superior.

[Doug Harriman]

After looking at the java.util.Hashtable object, there is one major flaw with that solution. The java hashtable seems to only be able to store object types that are also implemented in java. For Matlab object types defined by the user, the Java hashtable throws an error. The pure Matlab implementation can store any Matlab object type that can be put into a cell array. It can also use any Matlab object type as a key.

[M MA]

excellent submission
I wonder why matlab doesn't have built-in dictionaries