Behavior of repmat with user-defined object

I have defined a class which displays, and in many ways behaves, like a table:

>> obj

obj = 

 
               A           B    
            ________    ________

    Row1    [0.7943]    [0.1656]
    Row2    [0.3112]    [0.6020]
    Row3    [0.5285]    [0.2630]

I have also defined a horzcat method for the class which autogenerates column names when needed to avoid duplicates:

    >> [obj,obj]

ans = 

 
               A           B          Col3        Col4  
            ________    ________    ________    ________

    Row1    [0.7943]    [0.1656]    [0.7943]    [0.1656]
    Row2    [0.3112]    [0.6020]    [0.3112]    [0.6020]
    Row3    [0.5285]    [0.2630]    [0.5285]    [0.2630]

I have not defined a repmat method for the class, and therefore I expected the code below to give an error, but it didn't. Instead, Matlab's built-in repmat produces this result,

    >> repmat(obj,1,2)

ans = 

 
               A           B          A_1         B_1   
            ________    ________    ________    ________

    Row1    [0.7943]    [0.1656]    [0.7943]    [0.1656]
    Row2    [0.3112]    [0.6020]    [0.3112]    [0.6020]
    Row3    [0.5285]    [0.2630]    [0.5285]    [0.2630]

which interestingly as well, is still a member of my user-defined class.

    >> whos ans
  Name      Size            Bytes  Class          Attributes

  ans       3x4              3343  TabularCell  

Note that the result is more or less what one gets if you first convert my object to a regular table, except that the result remains as type table,

   >> repmat(table(obj),1,2)

ans =

  3×4 table

               A           B          A_1         B_1   
            ________    ________    ________    ________

    Row1    [0.7943]    [0.1656]    [0.7943]    [0.1656]
    Row2    [0.3112]    [0.6020]    [0.3112]    [0.6020]
    Row3    [0.5285]    [0.2630]    [0.5285]    [0.2630]

So, going back to the case of repmat(obj,1,2), it appears that repmat automatically knew that I had a table() converter method defined and decided to use it to pre-convert my obj to a table. My question is, how did repmat know that my table() method had the required behavior, or does it just automatically try/catch all possible conversions it can think of until something works?

[dpb]

"how did repmat know ...?"

Access to the internal CrystalBall Toolbox, mayhaps?

As an old prof said regarding pair production, "And then magic happens!"