Inexplicable behavior of SAVE command

1 view (last 30 days)
Hi, I have qestion about SAVE command behavior in GUI. In my GUI I use command:
save rotor_spec; %works fine...saves all variables to rotor_spec.mat
But today I tried make option for user to choose name for the file, not only rotor_spec.mat; I used this:
name = uiputfile('*.mat')
save name; % or save('name')
And it does not work. I do not realy need this for my GUI, but I would like to know, why it does not work.

Accepted Answer

John D'Errico
John D'Errico on 18 Dec 2014
Edited: John D'Errico on 18 Dec 2014
The one thing you did NOT try was
save(name)
name is a variable, that contains a file name. Use it as such.
When you do this:
save name
MATLAB does create a mat file. The name of that file will be name.mat. Look in your directory.
This happens because MATLAB functions can also be used as commands. When you do so, MATLAB actually passes the string 'name' to the save function, as if you had executed
save('name')
See that this is NOT the same as passing the contents of the VARIABLE name to save. When you use a function as a command, it takes whatever follows the command as literal text, a string, and passes that to your chosen function.
  1 Comment
Jiri Franc
Jiri Franc on 18 Dec 2014
Thank you for great explanation. I thought I tried this posibility too. Apparently, I should take a break. Thank you once more.

Sign in to comment.

More Answers (1)

Adam
Adam on 18 Dec 2014
Edited: Adam on 18 Dec 2014
Try:
save( name )
I think the
save name
without the parenthesis only works if name is an absolute string, not a variable e.g.
save 'MyFile.mat'
though I may be wrong.
  2 Comments
John D'Errico
John D'Errico on 18 Dec 2014
save name
DOES do something. It DOES work, just that it does something you may not expect. See my answer. This is due to having used the command form of save, as opposed to using the function form of save.
Jiri Franc
Jiri Franc on 18 Dec 2014
Thanks, you are right...it works.

Sign in to comment.

Categories

Find more on App Building in Help Center and File Exchange

Tags

Community Treasure Hunt

Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!

Start Hunting!