Advanced matlab function autocompletion based on previous input

Hello Matlab community! first question for me:

Short question: is there an easy/documented way (or is it gonna be implemented in future releases) of providing input autocompletion for functions based on previous inputs?

Context: I found very useful the link below provided in other question/answer about autocompletion but it seems to me it has been somehow abandoned...

https://it.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/customize-code-suggestions-and-completions.html

the usage of mutuallyExclusiveGroup – Definition of set of exclusive arguments goes next by the desired result but not close enough.

To make a practical example my ideal result would be to get to the same user experience level that the function readcell(...) offers: if I provide an xls filename as first input and then type "sheet" matlab knows automatically the sheetnames of that file and suggest them. I tried to navigate inside the readcell(..) code but I think I'm missing something..

The autocompletion approach with the json template is kinda 'static' in my opinion, since I don't know what file the user will enter, I can't enumerate all the options manually, and I don't know how to filter something more specific than a file-format like *mat, *xlsx,...

Any workaround? Or maybe I'm just not smart enough to make it work.

Another thing I use consistently for the autocompletion is the "argument (Input)" syntax for my purposes, usually I use

{mustBeMember(__,[option1, option2, ..]} and that helps me a lot to provide fast ways to make autocompletions for end users. But also in this situation I see no way to reuse the information of a previous input.. in example it could be cool, let's say, having this:

function bill = iWannaEat( restaurant, dish)    % < let's keep things simple and assume this is a simple function, or a static method.
    arguments (Input)
        restaurant (1,1) KitchenObject
        dish (1,:) string {mustBeMember(dish, restaurant.MenuSheet)} = "water"  % < but I can't reuse 
                                                                                %   restaurant.MenuSheet, 
                                                                                %   because a .MenuSheet must be guaranteed to exist?
    end
    bill = ... things ... 
end

By the way I appreciate the extraordinary work you do for free to help other programmers with their things!!!

I went through 2014a till the 2024 and the developments has been huge, do you agree?

clc, clear all

Answer 1

[Dinesh]

Hello,

As per my understanding, MATLAB does not natively support dynamic, context-sensitive autocompletion for user-defined functions directly through simple settings or annotations.

As you've found, MATLAB allows for some level of customization of code suggestions and completions through JSON files, but this method is indeed somewhat static. It's designed more for static API like scenarios where the inputs are known beforehand, not for dynamic content that changes based on previous inputs.

[Augusto Mazzei]

Hello Dinesh, thanks for replying. I'll wait a little more before voting, because as we're agreeing on the fact that there is no easy way with this conventional methods to make code suggestion dynamic, still persist the fact that functions like 'readcell(..)' provide what I'm looking for, and so I wonder: why not replicate it? what's the underlying solution?