How to overwrite some workspace variables in a dynamic program?

Hello,

I have a dynamic program that creates objects in the workspace (datasets, matrices) with the same name each loop but the objects themselves change size each time. Each loop I save them to a data structure and don't want to clear out the workspace. What is the best practice for "overwriting"? Ideas I have are: 1) create a new initialized matrix each time with zeros to wipe out the old matrix or 2) remove the matrix with MLDeleteMatrix(var_name) but this doesn't seem to work with my version (R2011b).

Answer 1

[Kye Taylor]

Both ideas are good. If 2. doesn't work, try

clear('var_name')

or

clear var_name

Answer 2

[Ken Atwell]

You can just reassign the variable with new content, MATLAB try to merge the new content with the old, nor will it leak memory.

 >> A=ones(100);
 >> size(A)
 ans =
    100   100
 >> A=ones(25);
 >> size(A)
 ans =
     25    25