Replacement for CLEAR to avoid destructive behavior

this clear.m ensures you'll never accidentally type "clear" or "clear all" and wipe your workspace.

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this function masks the builtin "clear" and carefully checks to make sure that "all" (or the default zero-argument case, which MathWorks foolishly made equivalent to "all") is not in the argument list. It accepts any mixture of string and cell arrays of string arguments.
Further, this function checks whether it was called from the console. If not , i.e. was called from within a function, it reverts to the builtin "clear" function so that function environments can be cleared as would normally happen.
With thanks to Cris Luengo and Andrew Janke over at StackOverflow.

Cite As

Carl Witthoft (2026). Replacement for CLEAR to avoid destructive behavior (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/71405-replacement-for-clear-to-avoid-destructive-behavior), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .

General Information

MATLAB Release Compatibility

  • Compatible with any release

Platform Compatibility

  • Windows
  • macOS
  • Linux
Version Published Release Notes Action
1.0.0.1

cleaned up comments

1.0.0