#581 Undefined variable error

[Vasilis Nicolaou]

While having nested functions, in a parent function, they don't recognise the variables defined in the parent one. Matlab does that and it is really annoying since neither declaring them global works. Please fix.

[Samit Basu]

Please post an example.

[Vasilis Nicolaou]

Example
Function f=my_function(input)
constant = 5
Function g=eqation(init)
do something with constant

[Tunococ]

I just encountered this too. MATLAB and Octave allow nested functions to access variables in the scope of the enclosing function. This makes it possible to define, for example, a non-anonymous function that relies on some input arguments of the enclosing function. For example, the following function is supposed to add scalar to each entry of X:

function Y = addscalar(X, scalar)

  function z = addentry(x)
    z = x + scalar;
  end

  Y = arrayfun(@addentry, X);

end

FreeMat will complain that scalar is unknown in the scope of addentry. This works, however, if I define addentry as an anonymous function:

function Y = addscalar(X, scalar)

  Y = arrayfun(@(x) x + scalar, X);

end

Of course the functionality of addscalar itself is not important here as + already operates this way.

The thing is sometimes the function of which the handle will be passed as an argument to another function cannot be written as an anonymous function.