Unknown number of output variables

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There are some functions that support variable number of output variables. For example, ind2sub(), depending on the matrix size, could have variable number of output.
if I type:
[I1,I2]=ind2sub([3,4],10);
I get the correct answer, I1=1 and I2=4;
but if I issue:
subIndices=ind2sub([3,4],10);
then I won't get subIndices= [1,4]; but I get subIndices=10; which definitely is not what I wanted.
Now here is my quesitons. What if I don't know the input size and that is defined during the runtime, meaning that my input size once might be [3,4] and another time it would be [3,4,5]. So once I need to call [I1,I2]=ind2sub([3,4],10) but another time I need to have [I1,I2,I3]=ind2sub([3,4,5],10) in the code.
In this easy case I just rewrote another version of ind2sub which outputs the indices as vector, you can see the code at the end of this post; but what is a better way of doing this?
P.S. I don't want to construct the command string and use eval()
Here is the modified version of ind2sub():
function subIndices = myInd2Sub(inputSize,index)
%%myInd2Sub is similar to MATLAB's ind2sub except that the output, i.e.
% the indices for each dimensions, are provided in a single array, instead
% of separate output variables.
% Checking input arguments
validateattributes(inputSize, ...
{'numeric'}, ...
{'vector','integer','positive'});
validateattributes(index, ...
{'numeric'}, ...
{'scalar','integer','positive','<=',prod(inputSize)});
% preparing the output
subIndices = zeros(numel(inputSize),1);
% changing the index to zero-base
index = index - 1;
% calculating the indices for each dimension
for i=numel(subIndices):-1:2
nElem = prod(inputSize(1:i-1));
subIndices(i) = floor(index/nElem);
index = index - subIndices(i)*nElem;
end
subIndices(1) = index;
% changing back the indices to 1-base.
subIndices = subIndices + 1;
end

Accepted Answer

Steven Lord
Steven Lord on 15 Jan 2016
Edited: Steven Lord on 15 Jan 2016
% User specifies number of inputs/outputs at runtime
N = input('Enter number of dimensions to mesh (2-5) ');
% Inputs to NDGRID specified at runtime by user as elements of a cell array
inputs = repmat({[0,1]}, 1, N);
% Outputs from NDGRID specified at runtime by user as elements of a cell array
outputs = cell(1, N);
% Call NDGRID with specified number of inputs and outputs by turning cell arrays into CSLs
[outputs{:}] = ndgrid(inputs{:});
% Use the outputs to display the coordinates of one of the points on the grid
d = input(sprintf('Enter an integer value between 1 and %d ', 2^N));
fprintf('Your combination is:')
for k = 1:N
fprintf(' %d', outputs{k}(d));
end
fprintf('\n')
I didn't add in any error checking for the values of N or d because this is a very quick example. But I wouldn't use too large an N as it could use a lot of memory.

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