# Tips and Tricks: Writing MATLAB Functions with Flexible Calling Syntax

MATLAB® functions often have flexible calling syntax with required inputs, optional inputs, and name-value pairs. While this flexibility is convenient for the end user, it can mean a lot of work for the programmer who must implement the input handling. You can greatly reduce the amount of code needed to handle input arguments by using the inputParser object.

Our goal is to define a function with the following calling syntax:

function a = findArea(width,varargin)
% findArea(width)
% findArea(width,height)
% findArea(... 'shape',shape)

With inputParser you can specify which input arguments are required (width), which are optional (height), and which are optional name-value pairs ('shape'). inputParser also lets you confirm that each input is valid—for instance, that it is the right size, shape, or data type. Finally, inputParser lets you specify default values for any optional inputs.

inputParser is a MATLAB object. To use it, you first create an object and then call functions to add the various input arguments.  Let’s start by adding the required input argument, width:

p = inputParser;
addRequired(p,'width');

Our input parser ensures that the user has specified at least one input argument. We want to go one step further—to make sure that the user entered a numeric value. We include a validation function, which is a handle to the built-in function isnumeric:

p = inputParser;
addRequired(p,'width',@isnumeric);

The input parser will now generate an error if given a value for width that is not numeric.

When we add the optional height input, we also include a default value:

defaultHeight = 1;
addOptional(p,'height',defaultHeight,@isnumeric);

Adding support for the 'shape' name-value pair is trickier, since we must make sure that the user entered either 'square' or 'rectangle'. We create a custom anonymous function that returns true if the input string matches, and false if it does not:

defaultShape = 'rectangle';
checkString = @(s) any(strcmp(s,{'square','rectangle'}));
addParamValue(p,'shape',defaultShape,checkString);

Now that we have defined our input parsing rules, we are ready to parse the inputs. We pass the function inputs to the parse function of the inputParser, using {:} to convert the input cell array varargin to a comma-separated list of input arguments. We get the validated user input values from the Results structure in our inputParser to use in the rest of the function:

parse(p,width,varargin{:});
width  = p.Results.width;
height = p.Results.height;
shape  = p.Results.shape;

To see how the code snippets in this article fit together, read the input validation example in the inputParser documentation. You’ll then be ready to use inputParser to offer flexible calling syntax in your own MATLAB functions.

Published 2012 - 92053v00