Set default values

Set default values

version 1.0.0.0 (1.32 KB) by Richie Cotton

A very simple function that initialises a missing or empty value in the caller function.

5.0

3 Ratings

3 Downloads

Updated 23 Mar 2010

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Overview
Functions

Editor's Note: This file was selected as MATLAB Central Pick of the Week

In order to set default values for variables, I find the start of my functions littered with

if nargin < 1 || isempty(x)
x = 1;
end

if nargin < 2 || isempty(y)
y = 3;
end
etc.

This is pretty ugly, so I've created a wrapper to prettify it. Honestly, it's so simple that I nearly didn't upload this, but it does make your functions cleaner. Now the above is transformed to

SetDefaultValue(1, 'x', 1);
SetDefaultValue(2, 'y', 3);

Note that there are other ways to set defaults. See
http://blogs.mathworks.com/loren/2009/05/05/nice-way-to-set-function-defaults/

Cite As

Richie Cotton (2021). Set default values (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27056-set-default-values), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved April 11, 2021.

Comments and Ratings (4)

Terry

20 May 2016

Sorry, you still need to do the "evalin" trick
~evalin('caller', ['exist(''' argName ''', ''var'')']) || ...

Terry

20 May 2016

@Marco, I ran into the same thing. I just modified the condition so that it tests for the variable's existence before trying to access it.

~exist(argName,'var') || ...

Added before the 'isempty(...' line

Marco Celesti

1 Apr 2016

Thanks to the author for this useful function. I've used it with no problem with Matlab up to R2016a, with this release I get an error like this:

Error using evalin
Undefined function or variable 'a'.

Error in SetDefaultValue (line 19)
isempty(evalin('caller', argName))

Error in pippo (line 4)
SetDefaultValue(1,'a',1)

when executing a dummy function "pippo":

function [ c ] = pippo( a, b )
%PIPPO Summary of this function goes here
% Detailed explanation goes here
SetDefaultValue(1,'a',1)
SetDefaultValue(2,'a',4)

c = a*b;

end

How should I fix it to get it working with R2016a (and possibly back compatible)?
Thanks a lot,

Marco

David Young

23 Mar 2010