Environment Capture

Capture the environment (or scope, maybe even call it a closure) of the function caller.

Description

function env = env_capture(varargin)
% function env = env_capture(varargin)
% Capture the scope/environment of the caller. This is useful
% to snapshot in a running function all local (and local global)
% including persistent variables with their bindings.
%
% If no arguments provided, returns all bindings from caller context.
% Example execution:
% env = env_capture('ignore', 'ans', 'maxbytes', 100);
%
% Optional Input:
% varargin = keyword/argument pair: (keyed on first letter of keyword)
% +-------+----------+------------------------------------+
% |keyword| value | description |
% | |(example) | |
% +-------+----------+------------------------------------+
% | m | 1000 | maximum number of bytes of |
% | | | varibles to capture |
% +-------+----------+------------------------------------+
% | i | 'ans' | variable name to ignore |
% +-------+----------+------------------------------------+
%
% Output:
% env = <struct> whose fieldnames are the variables declared/bound
% in the scope of the caller and whose values are the
% values of the variables.
%
% Note: multiple variables can be ignored like in the following:
% env_capture('ignore', 'ans', 'ignore', 'beta', 'maxbytes', 1000);
%
% Author: David Weinstein ([e-mail])

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.8 (R2009a)

[David Weinstein]

I'm interested to know if anyone has found this function useful or had questions about its use.