Comments and Ratings

Thanks for the improvement, Thierry! The 'cellfun(@fcn, ...)' method, though elegant, unfortunately doesn't work on Matlab 6.x (which some of us still have to use. Sigh.)

Good idea!
I prefer to use 0 for gcf or 'last' option.
I've modified the function like this:
function cab(varargin)
% CAB close all but
% This function closes all figures currently open EXCEPT for
% those listed as arguments. 'cab' stands for 'close all but'.
%
% SYNTAX:
% CAB figure_handle1 figure_handle2 ... (command line syntax)
% CAB(figure_handle1, figure_handle2, ...)
% Use 0 for gcf. CAB 0 closes all figures except current one.
% CAB : same as close all
%
if nargin==0,
    close all;
    return
end

% all_figs = findall(0, 'type', 'figure'); % Uncomment this to include ALL windows, including those with hidden handles (e.g. GUIs)
all_figs = findobj(0, 'type', 'figure');

if iscellstr(varargin) % command line syntax
    figs2keep=cellfun(@str2double,varargin);
else
    figs2keep=[varargin{:}];
end
figs2keep(figs2keep==0)=gcf;
delete(setdiff(all_figs, figs2keep)

I love it. Not sure how I got along for 15 years without it! One small note - the "last" syntax actually keeps the current figure open, which wasn't necessarily the last one created. I love this behavior so much, that I tweaked CAB to do this with no input arguments, too.

Thanks for a simple, elegant, and very useful function.