pass arguments to a function that have not been defined in the workspace

Hi all,

What am I supposed to do in order to achieve the following:

function op=Mset(op,ip,kk,n)
if kk==1
  op=ip./n;
else
  op = op + (ip./n);
end

Simply, I would like to pass 'op' which is an undefined variable to the function. In other words, op merely represents a bunch of characters or the name of the variable.

[Adam]

You need to pass an actual variable, not the name of a variable, which is only relevant within the context of its own workspace.

Given the code, op has to exist if kk is not equal to 1. If kk is equal to 1 then you could pass in [] as the first argument (or indeed literally anything if you really want!) as it will not be used.

[Stephen23]

"In other words, op merely represents ... the name of the variable."

Don't do this. Dynamically accessing variables names is how beginners force themselves into writing slow, complex, buggy code. Read this to know why:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

It is much more efficient to use indexing, fieldnames, or the columns/rows of a table.

[Aneesh Vasudev]

Thanks Stephen and Adam. I'm currently using a struct. I initialized the struct before calling the function and then pass the names of fields and dynamically append it to the struct.