Using the Help Report

Posted by Michael Katz, January 3, 2012

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Last week Jiro picked addcopyright for the File Exchange Pick of the Week. The pick looks like a helpful tool for adding copyright text to MATLAB program files, but while reading the post, I was reminded of the Help Report, which is part of MATLAB’s current folder reports.

The Help Report scans the .m files in the current folder and analyzes the text help at the top of the file. This is the text displayed in the Command Window, when you use the help command. The report is most useful if you want to create MathWorks-style help for your own code, but is still useful even if you use only a part of it.

One of the features the report has is the ability to flag a missing Copyright or update a Copyright line if it is out of date. It also checks for H1 text, examples, “see also”, and even scans class methods for help text.

To run the help report, go to the Actions “gear” in the current folder browser, and select Reports -> Help Report. This generates a HTML report of each file in the current folder and what help pieces are present. You can use the checkboxes at top to deselect the parts of help you don’t care about for your files.