Can you use cell or struct as function input？

Or can you use cell or struct as function output？

Thanks！

Answer 1

[Geoff]

Yes, and yes.

I'm puzzled that you're asking this here when you could quite easily test for yourself... Part of the process of coding is trying things out. Have faith that this process usually does not break your computer.

function [output] = AnswerMyQuestion( input )
  output = input;
end

% Can I pass structs in and out of functions?
result = AnswerMyQuestion( struct('astring', 'value', 'anumber', 1) ) );
disp(class(result));

% Can I pass cells in and out of functions?
result = AnswerMyQuestion( cell(3,3) );
disp(class(result));

[Jan]

Exactly. And of course this is explained exhaustively in the documentation. E.g. there are a lot of commands as strcmp, cell2struct and struct2cell (!), which accept cells already.

[Haozi]

Thank you so much!

[Haozi]

plus: I guess my question is, seems that when you define the function, you don't need to define its input argument as struct, you just use a struct as the input. I don't quite understand that.

[Geoff]

That's right. MATLAB is implicitly typed, so any data type is fair game for an identifier. You can reassign a different type at any stage. You can also accidentally overload inbuilt functions by assigning to a variable with the same name, so you have to be a little thoughtful. Perhaps you're accustomed to using explicitly typed languages such as Java or C, hence the confusion. It's just a different programming paradigm, with its own pros and cons.

[Jan]

@Haozi: These topic belong to the general basics of Matlab and the forum is not the right location to discuss about them. Please read the "Getting Started" chapters of the documentation.

[BGranato]

I actually have the same question. I have a function and I'm trying to call it with an input variable of type struct and it won't allow me.

PS: I thought all questions were welcome...?

[Jan]

@BGranato: Please open a new thread and post the details there: Which function? Which input? Which error message?