Hi everyone. I am new to MATLAB and i need help evaluating the following question especially part (b) since i dont quite understand it. I am not convinced my code answers the question asked.Thank you.

 Include your MATLAB statement and a screen shot of your pop-up menu. 
(a) Write a menu statement that instructs the user to choose one of the following interpolation schemes: Nearest, Linear, or Spline and saves the user’s choice under the variable, Method. 
(b) In part (a), what is the variable, Method, if the user chooses Linear?

[Walter Roberson]

menu() is not a popup menu. They might be expecting you to use uicontrol() style popup

[GEORGE WAYNE MWANGI]

How would one use uicontrol() in the above case?

Answer 1

[Cam Salzberger]

Hey George,

This is a pretty confusingly-worded quesiton. Walter is right that "menu" does not produce a pop-up the way that a uicontrol with the Style 'popupmenu' would. However, using "menu" is the only way that question (b) makes any kind of sense. Maybe they meant that is creates a dialog box that "pops up" on the screen?

If you use "menu", then unlike the superior questdlg or something like that, the output is the index of the choice selected. For example:

choiceIdx = menu('My question?','A','B','C');

if the user selects "C", then "choiceIdx" would have the value 3. Generally you would instead use this like:

x = rand(10);
options = {'omitnan','includenan'};
choiceIdx = menu('Would you like to omit or include NaNs?',options);
y = max(x,options{choiceIdx});

Hope that gives you some background on why someone might do this.

-Cam

[Image Analyst]

I also blame MATLAB for picking the name "popup menu" for what the rest of the world (including Microsoft) calls a "drop down list" which is far more descriptive of how it operates.

I don't agree that questdlg() is superior. It has some advantages, like showing up in the middle of your screen whereas menu() appears in the upper left of your screen, but has some disadvantages like it returns the string of the button capture which you have to check with strcmp() instead of the button number like menu() returns which is much simpler to check.

Since the question specifically said "Write a menu statement" then if they marked it wrong, I think you'd have an argument for using menu() instead of uicontrol() which would make the deceptively-named popup control: "You TOLD me to use menu, not uicontrol!!!"

[GEORGE WAYNE MWANGI]

How would one use uicontrol() in the above case? Please use the above code to explain it to me. Thank you.

[Walter Roberson]

See https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/uicontrol.html#f52-578935