When using a multiple-output matlab function, do i need to callback all variables? or can I just take the first two variables? (if so..is it not recommended?)
lets say in function.m
[a, b, c] = function( )
in main.m
[var1, var2] = function;
When calling (almost) any function in matlab you can request fewer outputs than it specifies. So, yes the example you give should work perfectly fine.
There are some clever things you can do with this, such as using nargout within a function to see how many output arguments have been requested and only calculating the values that have been requested as an optimisation trick.
It depends on the definition of the function, and exactly which of the outputs you want to get.
Not all the function allow to do it, you can find all the options for each function in the beginning of the help documentation on the specific function.
If you want only the 2nd, or 3rd outputs, and you want also to save the computation-time of the results that does not interesting, you can use ~ option, like this (for versions 2009b and later):
[~, var1, var2]=function
Many functions allow for options to passed that change how the function behaves. I used/wrote various numerical solving functions a bit and one that nice amount of option, for instance is the LSMR function(s).
Otherwise, if you can manipulate the original either introduce an input(s) to do so before or at the end with an inline subroutine to generate the outputs you want.
Or if you can't it will return as either a cell array or a vector and you can pass an anonymous function to generate the desired outputs that way.
Really, can be done many ways. Very contextual.
Related
I am going to try and explain myself simply in the hopes of getting a simple answer.
Let's say I have a function 'calculate' that takes the inputs [t,k,r,x] and outputs [A,B,C,D] as follows:
function [A,B,C,D] = calculate(t,k,r,x)
Now lets say I have another function that takes these outputs as the inputs, and spits out more, different outputs, eg.
function [M,N] = again(A,B,C,D)
How do I link [M,N] to say k and t? The overall aim is to minimise both M and N by optimising k and t, and I can guess that it has something to do with nested functions and passing parameters but I'm not sure how to start, and the start is all I want. Thanks
Take a look at the Matlab optimization toolbox. It provides functions for a multitude of optimization problems. Although I believe these functions only take one function as a parameter. Therefore for your case it would probably be best, if you do it like this if you can:
Write function calculate.m with parameters (t,k,r,x) and save it.
Write function again.m with parameters(t,k,r,x) and save it.
Function again calls function calculate with parameters (t,k,r,x) and then continues to determine (M,N) from the output of calculate.
in the Matlab toolbox optimization function, e.g.: fmincon(fun,x0,A,b), you then have to use again.m as the function you want to optimize (fun).
Hope that's good enough for a start.
Using deal we can write anonymous functions that have multiple output arguments, like for example
minmax = #(x)deal(min(x),max(x));
[u,v] = minmax([1,2,3,4]); % outputs u = 1, v = 4
But if you want to provide a function with its gradient to the optimization function fminunc this does not work. The function fminunc calls the input function sometimes with one and sometimes with two output arguments. (EDIT: This is not true, you just have to specify whether you actually want to use the gradient or not, using e.g. optimset('SpecifyObjectiveGradient',true). Then within one call it always asks for the same number of arguments.)
We have to provide something like
function [f,g] = myFun(x)
f = x^2; % function
g = 2*x; % gradient
which can be called with one or two output arguments.
So is there a way to do the same inline without using the function keyword?
Yes there is, it involves a technique used in this question about recursive anonymous functions. First we define a helper function
helper = #(c,n)deal(c{1:n});
which accepts a cell array c of the possible outputs as well as an integer n that says how many outputs we need. To write our actual function we just need to define the cell array and pass nargout (the number of expected output arguments) to helper:
myFun = #(x)helper({x^2,2*x,2},nargout);
This now works perfectly when calling fminunc:
x = fminunc(myFun,1);
The OP's solution is good in that it's concise and useful in many cases.
However, it has one main shortcoming, in that it's less scalable than otherwise possible. This claim is made because all functions ({x^2,2*x,2}) are evaluated, regardless of whether they're needed as outputs or not - which results in "wasted" computation time and memory consumption when less than 3 outputs are requested.
In the example of this question this is not an issue because the function and its derivatives are very easy to compute and the input x is a scalar, but under different circumstances, this can be a very real issue.
I'm providing a modified version, which although uglier, avoids the aforementioned problem and is somewhat more general:
funcs_to_apply = {#(x)x.^2, #(x)2*x, #(x)2};
unpacker = #(x)deal(x{:});
myFun = #(x)unpacker(cellfun(#(c)feval(c,x),...
funcs_to_apply(1:evalin('caller','nargout')),...
'UniformOutput',false)...
);
Notes:
The additional functions I use are cellfun, evalin and feval.
The 'UniformOutput' argument was only added so that the output of cellfun is a cell (and can be "unpacked" to a comma-separated list; we could've wrapped it in num2cell instead).
The evalin trick is required since in the myFun scope we don't know how many outputs were requested from unpacker.
While eval in its various forms (here: evalin) is usually discouraged, in this case we know exactly who the caller is and that this is a safe operation.
I want to restrict the variable that I use as input for a matlab function block, it must be only able to increase.
To achieve that i have tried to compare the variable and the previous sample of it in a matlab function, but i don't know how to create two inputs. To solve that i've tried to use a mux, but then i get an error. And google doesn't give me an explanation how to use a mux signal as input for a matlab function.
So that leaves me here with this low-level question.
Thanks in advance for your help and time. Cheers.
To use multiple variables in a function, you need to modify your function declaration at the first line of your function. The reference syntax is:
function [y1,...,yN] = myfun(x1,...,xM)
where x1 through xM are inputs. Your declaration with two inputs might look something like:
function [returnValue] = hasIncreased(previousSample, variable)
See the Matlab Function Documentation for more information.
In my code, I have a line that looks like this:
f=#(test) bf{i}(5);
where bf is a cell array with functions from str2func() stored in it, i is a variable storing an integer, and the 5 is the argument to pass to the function. How can I get matlab to evaluate the line using the current value of i? Right now when I display f it outputs:
#(test)bf{i}(5)
Lets say i=1, I want it to output:
#(test)bf{1}(5)
Although technically the bf{1} should also be replaced with whatever function is stored in bf{1}. How can I force matlab to evaluate the variables in this statement?
When you create a function handle, the workspace variables are copied and the expression is evaluated when you call the function handle (Typically not a problem in memory consumption, matlab stores only changes).
Now the problem is, to tell Matlab when to evaluate what part of the expression.
If you are aiming for a better performance, pre-evaluate all constant parts of the function. Let's say your function is #(x)(g(3).*f(x)), in this case matlab would evaluate g(3) on every call.
Instead use:
f=#(x)(x.^2)
g_3=g(3)
h=#(x)(g_3.*f(x))
Now having the constant parts evaluated, you want to see the constants instead of the variabe name. I know two ways to achieve this.
You can use the symbolic toolbox, basically converting the function handle to a symbolic function, then to a function handle again. This not only displays the constants, but also substitutes f. This is not possible for all functions.
>> matlabFunction(h(sym('x')))
ans =
#(x)x.^2.*4.2e1
Another possibility is to use eval:
h=eval(['#(x)',sprintf('%e',g_3),'.*f(x)'])
Pre-evaluating constant parts of the expressions as I did in the first step is typically recommendable, but both solutions to get the constant visible in your function handle aren't really recommendable. The first solution using matlabFunction only applies to some functions, while the second comes with all the disadvantages of eval.
Say I have a function foo that can return three values given an input:
function [a,b,c] = foo(input)
The calculations of variables b and c take a long time, so sometimes I may wish to ignore their calculation within foo. If I want to ignore both calculations, I simply call the function like this:
output1 = foo(input);
and then include nargout within foo:
if nargout == 1
% Code to calculate "a" only
else
% Code to calculate other variables
The problem occurs if I want to calculate the last output, but not the second. In that case my function call would be:
[output1,~,output3] = foo(input);
Now if I use nargout within foo to check how many outputs are in the function-call, it will always return 3 because the tilde operator (~) is considered a valid output. Therefore, I cannot use nargout to determine whether or not to calculate the second output, b, within foo.
Is there any other way to do this? I.e., is it possible to check which outputs of a function-call are discarded from within the function itself?
The commenters are basically right; this is not something that can be totally solved by the user unless The MathWorks adds functionality. However, I wrote a small function, istilde (Wayback Machine Archive), a while back that attempts to do what you ask. It works in many cases, but it's really a bit of hack and not a totally robust solution. For example, I did not attempt to get it to work for functions called from the Command Window directly (this could potentially be added with some work). Also, it relies on parsing the actual M-file, which can have issues. See the included demo file for how one might use istilde.
Feel free to edit my code for your needs – just don't use this in any production code due to the robustness issues. Any improvements would be welcome.