How can I write a random function with names?
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Martha Spadaccino
on 15 May 2019
Commented: Martha Spadaccino
on 16 May 2019
Hi all. I'm very new to MatLab programming. I have to write a random function that returns 1 pair of colour name. How do I do?
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Walter Roberson
on 16 May 2019
First off, put together the data from https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colors:_A%E2%80%93F and https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/color-thesaurus-correct-names-of-shades/ and other sites, all to create a large list of color names. I suggest converting it all to lowercase.
Then put together some code that, for every call, creates a random vector of characters that are valid in MATLAB statements (not much point in permitting anthing outside of space (char(32)) to ~ (char(126)).
Then loop. At each step, generate a character vector, add '@()' in front of it, and use str2func() on that. What that gives you is a function handle. Then try/catch/end on executing the function handle with a single output and assigning the result to a variable. If the result is a character vector or is a string object, then convert to lowercase and ismember() it against the large list of color names. If you get a match, then you have found your random function that returns a color name.
... this might take rather a lot of executions. Shorter color names are more probable, but it is certainly not impossible that the function will happen to generate 'ballet slipper' on its second run instead of several tens of thousand of runs before it accidentally emits 'red'
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Stephen23
on 16 May 2019
"First off, put together the data from ... and other sites..."
You can easily save yourself the trouble of doing that (I've already done it for you):
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