Multiple commands in one, Matlab - matlab

Question

Sometimes it is desired to make several calls in one command. A simple example could be strrep. Assume you want to replace all parentheses with brackets, all commas with dots and then remove all double quotations. The following pseudo code could then be desired:
strrep(myString, '()', '[]', ',', '.', '"', '')
Is there any way to accomplish this? You could of course go with:
strrep(strrep(strrep(myString, '()', '[]'), ',', '.'), '"', '')
Or save the strings in a cell array and use this in a for loop, but both solutions are incredibly ugly.
The most desired answer, is one that is generic for all functions that work in a similar way.

Answer 1

To directly answer your question, there is really no consistent way of doing this, no. It really depends on the function. If you search the documentation you will often find a way to do this. With strings, at least, you can usually pass cell arrays in place of strings to perform operations on multiple strings, and in this case multiple operations on the same string.
A Solution for This Particular Example
You can easily use regexprep to do this for you. You can pass a cell array of the expressions to match with a corresponding cell array of the replacement values.
regexprep('abc', {'a', 'b', 'c'}, {'1', '2', '3'});
%// '123'
For your specific example, you would do something like:
regexprep(myString, {'\(\)', ',', '"'}, {'[]', '.', ''})
And as an example:
myString = 'This, is a () "string"';
regexprep(myString, {'\(\)', ',', '"'}, {'[]', '.', ''})
%// 'This. is a [] string'
If you don't want to worry about escaping all of the expressions to be regex-compatible, you can use regexptranslate to do that for you.
expressions = regexptranslate('escape', {'()', ',', '"'});
regexprep(myString, expressions, {'[]', '.', ''});

Answer 2

Say you want function foo to work like this:
foo(Variable,Parameter1,Value1);
foo(Variable,Parameter1_1,Value1,Parameter2,Value2,...);
then using recursion:
function[Variable]=FooBar(Variable,varargin)
N=nargin-1; %\\ Count the input parameters
if N>=2
Parameter=varargin{1};
Value=varargin{2};
% Process the first Parameter-value pair
Variable=FooBar(Variable,varargin{3:N}); %\\ Cut first Parameter-Value pair off and pass the rest to foo again
end
This approach allows you to use chain of single parameters, pairs, triplets, quadruplets, etc.
In this perticullar example the pairs are executed as LIFO stack and last unpaired Parameter is ignored. You can also add some conditions to implement foo(IN,Parameter1,Value1,Modifier,Parameter2,Value2,...) and many other properties...
For your perticullar example:
function[MyString]=FooBar(MyString,varargin)
N=nargin-1; %\\ Count the input parameters
if N>=2
Parameter=varargin{1};
Value=varargin{2};
MyString=regexprep(MyString,Parameter,Value)
MyString=FooBar(MyString,varargin{3:N});%\\ Cut first Parameter-Value pair off and pass the rest to foo again
end
Examples:
>> myString='This, is a () "string"';
FooBar(myString,'()','[]','"','',',','.')
ans = This. is a [] string
>> myString='This, is a ("string")';
FooBar(myString,'()','[]','"','',',','.')
ans = This. is a (string)
>> myString='This, is a ("string")';
FooBar(myString,'(','[',')',']','"','',',','.')
ans = This. is a [string]

Answer 3

As already said by #Suever your example can be solved by regexprep and #thewaywewalk has hinted that there is no "general" soluction for all function calls.
Note I do not advocate this as a good way to code -> but its a quirky question and thus here is a suitable quirky solution....
There is lots of reason why you shouldn't do this - namely a nightmare to debug but you could in theory do this with an "intelligent" self calling function...
% Create your own function which takes the following inputs:
% fHandle - function handle to the function of choice
% property - your starting variable
% varargin - a cell array (or single var) of variables to
% pass into the fHandle on each call
% see examples below...
function output = multipleCalls ( fHandle, property, varargin )
% call your primary function using feval and your inputs
% with the 1st group of inputs from the 1st varargin
if iscell ( varargin{1} )
output = feval ( fHandle, property, varargin{1}{:} );
else
output = feval ( fHandle, property, varargin{1} );
end
% remove the varargin variable which has just been used.
varargin(1) = [];
% are they aremore multiple call?
if ~isempty ( varargin )
% if so self call to apply the subsequent calls.
output = multipleCalls ( fHandle, output, varargin{:} );
end
end
% modifying your example to use this method:
multipleCalls( #strrep, 'This, is a () "string"', { '()', '[]' }, { ',', '.' }, { '"', '' } )
% Its probably a longer command and is it any clearer -> probably not...
% Here is another example:
% Create a silly anonymous function
sillyFunction = #(a,b) a + b
% Then you can use it in the same way:
% Where 0 is what you start with and then
% each time you want to add 1, then 2, then 3 and finally 4
multipleCalls ( sillyFunction, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 )