How do I do multiple assignment in MATLAB?

Question

Here's an example of what I'm looking for:

>> foo = [88, 12]; >> [x, y] = foo; 

I'd expect something like this afterwards:

>> x  x =      88  >> y  y =      12 

But instead I get errors like:

??? Too many output arguments. 

I thought deal() might do it, but it seems to only work on cells.

>> [x, y] = deal(foo{:}); ??? Cell contents reference from a non-cell array object. 

How do I solve my problem? Must I constantly index by 1 and 2 if I want to deal with them separately?

Answer 1

You don't need deal at all (edit: for Matlab 7.0 or later) and, for your example, you don't need mat2cell; you can use num2cell with no other arguments::

foo = [88, 12]; fooCell = num2cell(foo); [x y]=fooCell{:}  x =      88   y =      12 

If you want to use deal for some other reason, you can:

foo = [88, 12]; fooCell = num2cell(foo); [x y]=deal(fooCell{:})  x =      88   y =      12