Indexing custom array class objects

To ask the questions I am going to give a simple example of what I would like to do. I have a custom Material class given here.

classdef Material < handle
    properties
        Modulus;
        Name;
    end

      methods
          % constructor
          function mat = Material(name,modulus)
              if nargin > 0
                  mat.Name = name;
                  mat.Modulus = modulus;
              end
          end % function mat = Material(name,modulus)

          function set.Modulus(mat,newModulus)
              mat.Modulus = newModulus;
          end % function set.Modulus(mat,newModulus)

          function set.Name(mat,newName)
              mat.Name = newName;
          end % function set.Name(mat,newName)

          function modulus = get.Modulus(mat)
              modulus = mat.Modulus;
          end % function modulus = get.Modulus(mat)

          function name = get.Name(mat)
              name = mat.Name;
          end % function name = get.Name(mat)

      end % methods

end % classdef Material

Here is some working code using the class:

mat1 = Material('A',30); % material A
mat2 = Material('B',25); % material B
mat3 = Material('C',45); % material C
mat = [mat1; mat2; mat3];
% get modulus values of A & C
mods = [mat([1,3]).Modulus]'; % this works nicely to get a vector of the modulus values

I would now like to update all the modulus values at once using a vector of them. Following MATLAB's general indexing the command would be:

% new modulus values
newModulus = [35; 20];
% update modulus values of A & C
mat([1,3]).Modulus = newModulus; % this does not work

However, this gives an error message. I believe MATLAB is purposely designed to not do the above statement, I think I read that in documentation someplace but have not been able to find it back. My question is, is there a way to implement such a thing myself, without using a for loop?

As of now the only way I can see implementing it is by using a for loop to loop over each value in the vector newModulus. Is using a for loop the only way? Or the best way? Or is there some way using MATLAB's built in matrix/vector notation or a built in function?

Is there a way to do this by overloading the subsasgn method in my class? Or do I need to create another class that has an array of Material objects and that class overloads the subsasgn method?

Answer 1

[per isakson]

Try this

    newModulus = {35,20};
    [mat([1,3]).Modulus] = deal( newModulus{:} ); % this does work

[Nick]

Yes, that works. I was not aware of the deal function. That is exactly what I needed. Thank you!