Why can't we define destructors for non-handle classes?

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I looked up documentation for destructors in Matlab, but it seems like they can only be defined for handle classes. Why is that? I can easily think of a use case for a non-handle class that needs a destructor:
classdef FileReader
% FileReader very simple file reader
properties
fid
end
methods
function obj = FileReader(file)
obj.fid = fopen(file, 'r');
end
function varargout = read(obj,varargin)
[varargout{1:nargout}] = obj.fread(obj.fid, varargin{:});
end
function delete(obj)
fclose(obj.fid);
end
end
end

Accepted Answer

Matthew Fall
Matthew Fall on 13 Dec 2022
Never mind, I figured out how to do this with onCleanup:
classdef FileReader
% FileReader very simple file reader
properties
fid
end
properties(Access=protected)
cleanup
end
methods
function obj = FileReader(file)
obj.fid = fopen(file, 'r');
obj.cleanup = onCleanup(@() obj.delete);
end
function varargout = read(obj,varargin)
[varargout{1:nargout}] = fread(obj.fid, varargin{:});
end
function delete(obj)
fclose(obj.fid);
disp('file closed!')
end
end
end

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