Comments on: Using the cell mode toolbar

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:30:37 +0000

@Petter, Cell mode really isn't meant to be used this way. It's really more for markup and does not have any meaning in the language. My first suggestion would be to make each of these individual logical units, such as separate functions (which you don't want), or to make your main file a function and each cell as subfunction, then call the main function and pass in the subfunctions you want to runs, and selectively execute each subfunction. You can have the zero-input case run all of them. Or you could guard each cell with a condition and set all the appropriate conditions before running the file. Finally you can play text games. For instance, get the text and use EVAL to run a sub-set. Obviously this is fragile depending on the existence of "%%'s" that aren't cell markers

a = matlab.desktop.editor.getActive
cells = regexp(a.Text,'%%.+?((?=%%)|(?=$))','match')
eval(cells{1})

If you want to generate a new script with some subset of the original's cells:

n = matlab.desktop.editor.newDocument
n.Text = [cells{1} cells{3}]

By: Petter

Petter — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 09:51:55 +0000

Do you know how to execute a cell from the command window (or from another script)? I currently have like 20 scripts in a file using cell mode (I do not want 20 different files), and would like to generate a script that runs several (but not all) of them after each others (so I can take a cup of coffee).

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:50:37 +0000

béla,

Not at this time, we’ll take it under advisement. My apologies to your girlfriend.

By: béla

béla — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:07:01 +0000

hm.. got your point.. not sure..
but for example is it somehow possible to use the mouse wheel to change the values ?
It is just a bit more natural to play with the wheel, and besides.. it annoys the hell out of my girlfriend if I am clicking a lot.. :)

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:58:43 +0000

béla,

I’m not sure how a scrollbar would help because (a) we’d more space, and (b) the limits are unknown (scrollbars need a minimum and maximum value. How do you envision using a scrollbar for the increments?

By: béla

béla — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:12:09 +0000

any chance you can get a scrollbar type tool to tweak increments ?
cheers

béla

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:05:32 +0000

Thanks for that idea, Brett from Pick of the Week. That's a good use of the incrementer. If my example is the 0-order use, yours is the 1-order. I wonder what the next level is...

By: Brett Shoelson

Brett Shoelson — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:17:36 +0000

Hey Ken and Mike,
Whenever I present MATLAB in bootcamp mode (which is very often), I always highlight the utility of cell-mode editing. One of the benefits I point out is the vastly under-utilized incrementer tools–few people know what they’re for. I typically will increment an initial guess at a threshold for an image, for instance.

But I also like to point out that one can get more creative with these buttons. For instance, if one wanted to try out our 6 different (IPT) algorithms for edge detection, the incrementer tools allow that, too:

%%
algs = {‘Sobel’,'Prewitt’,'Roberts’,'LOG’,'Zerocross’,'Canny’};
incr = 1; %INCREMENT HERE
imshow(edge(tissueMask,algs{incr}))
title([algs{incr} ' Edge Detection'])

Cheers,
Brett

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:23:09 +0000

Guy, great point. Simulink parameters are an excellent usage of this!

By: Guy

Guy — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:01:51 +0000

My favorite element of the cell mode toolbar is the “-+” part. Since I discovered the possibilities of this feature, I use it everytime I need to tune or debug a Simulink model.

By writing a simple script, I can change the value of a parameter (using the “-+ feature”), simulate the model using SIM, plot the results and see the effect. click, click, click, done. It speeds up things by 1000%.