Call updated version of currently running function in MATLAB - matlab

Question

I am writing a function that I want to have the ability to automatically update itself. In other words, when the function is run, I want it to check if the current code in the editor is the most recent version and if it is not, go fetch the most recent version.
I have already solved the part about fetching the most recent version; however, I have not found a way to call this newly updated code from the current code. So even after the code is updated, I still want the new code to run with the same inputs that were used for the original call. Here is a brief example of what I mean:
function autoUpdatingCode(varargin)
if not_most_recent_version
urlwrite('http://somewebsite.com/autoUpdatingCode.p','autoUpdatingCode_updated.p')
delete('autoUpdatingCode.p');
movefile('autoUpdatingCode_updated.p','autoUpdatingCode.p');
c = onCleanup(#() restartCode(varargin));
return
end
... code for the function ...
end
function restartCode(inputs)
if isempty(inputs)
autoUpdatingCode();
elseif length(inputs)==1
autoUpdatingCode(inputs{1});
... so on for more inputs ...
end
end
Here I download the new code, delete the old version, and rename the updated version to the correct file name.
Note that the restartCode function is saved inside the same file as autoUpdatingCode. The problem here is that the call to autoUpdatingCode inside the restartCode function does not call the newly updated file (that was updated using movefile as shown), it calls the outdated code.
I'm assuming this happens because the entire program has been loaded into cache. Is there a way to clear the currently running function and load the new version? When I exit the function, the file is then updated with the new code as expected, I'm just looking for a way to force that update during execution of the same file.
I have so far experimented with rehash and clear, but had no luck with either. Using either of those functions still result in the old version of the code being called. I tried calling rehash and clear just after downloading, and just before the call to the function in the restartCode function.
If this is not possible, is there another workaround? I have considered automatically downloading another file that can restart the function and call this new function during the onCleanup function, but then I would need to delete that new file (which I can definitely do in my autoUpdatingCode function - I'm just looking for a cleaner alternative). Calling an external function from onCleanup still does not use the updated code.
Unfortunately, git (or any source control) is not an option here.

Answer 1

After messing with it for a while, I was able to find a solution. As the comment by #suever suggests, it is impossible to delete the file and then expect an updated version to be called. (More details here).
However, I was able to take advantage of function precedence to solve this problem. Instead of copying the new file to the same directory, I created a temporary directory, copied it there, and then called the function from that directory. Thanks to function precedence, the updated version is called instead of the program loaded into memory. The last step was just using dbstack (docs here) to determine if the program was being recursively called, in which case I moved the updated file from the temporary directory into the correct location and performed the necessary cleanup. Here's part of the updated code:
function autoUpdatingCode(varargin)
stack = dbstack('-completenames');
... process the stack ...
if recursively_called
cd('..');
movefile(newfile, oldfile);
rmdir('temp','s');
end
if not_most_recent_version
mkdir('temp');
websasve('./temp/autoUpdatingCode_updated.p', 'http://somewebsite.com/autoUpdatingCode.p',)
cd('temp');
c = onCleanup(#() restartCode(varargin));
return
end
... code for the function ...
end
function restartCode(inputs)
if isempty(inputs)
autoUpdatingCode();
elseif length(inputs)==1
autoUpdatingCode(inputs{1});
... so on for more inputs ...
end
end