Re: need function handle test run in Matlab

[John W. Eaton]

On 3/16/19 9:51 PM, Nicholas Jankowski wrote:
> diary attached.  Matlab 2018b
>    afh = anonfcn (13)
>
>    afh =
>
>        @(s)eval(s)
>
>     afh ('a')
>
>     Undefined function or variable 'a'.
>
>    afh ('b')
>
>     Undefined function or variable 'b'.
>
>    nfh = nestfcn (42)
>
>    nfh =
>
>        @nestfcn/nst
>
>    nfh ('a')
>
>     ans =
>
>        42
>
>     nfh ('b')
>
>     ans =
>
>        16     2     3    13
>         5    11    10     8
>         9     7     6    12
>         4    14    15     1


Thanks.

So even though anonymous functions can capture values from the 
surrounding context, they are not equivalent to nested functions, which 
apparently have full access to the parent workspaces even when the 
variables are not explicitly referenced.  I was hoping they would be 
equivalent (then the internal representation could be essentially 
identical; the only difference would be the syntax for parsing) but half 
expecting that they would be different because anonymous functions came 
well before nested functions.  I believe Octave gets this behavior right 
but there is room for improvement in thm implementation.

jwe