Calling function with varying number of parameters in Matlab

Question

I am using symbolic toolbox to generate a matlab function. But the number of input to the generated function is varying with the number of objects that I need (e.g., number of switches). For 2 and 3 switches the generated function look likes this :

y = fun(a1,a2,b1,b2)
y = fun(a1,a2,a3,b1,b2,b3)

In the script using this function I establish vectors of these parameters:

a = [a1 a2 ...]

What I want is to either call the generated function directly or make a wrapper function, so that I do not need to change the call statement when I change the number of switches. To complicate this problem even more, these variables are ACADO variables. That means that matrix and element-wise operation is not allowed (i.e., all math operation must be done with scalars, and equations in symbolic toolbox must be written for scalars).

Answer 1

You probably look for cell arrays and the {:} operator. It changes the contents of the cell to a coma separated list. The result can be passed to a function as parameters. For example:

v2 = {a1, a2, b1, b2};
v3 = {a1, a2, a3, b1, b2, b3};

And an example function:

function fun(varargin)
    display(['number of parameters: ' num2str(nargin)]);

You can call the function for different number of parameters 'transparently' as follows

fun(v2{:})
number of parameters: 4

fun(v3{:})
number of parameters: 6