MATLAB Programming

9 Classes and Objects
a.currentValue = 0;
a = class(a,'asset');
case 1
% if single argument of class asset, return it
if (isa(varargin{1},'asset'))
a = varargin{1};
else
error('Wrong argument type')
end
case 3
% create object using specified values
a.descriptor = varargin{1};
a.date = date;
a.type = varargin{2};
a.currentValue = varargin{3};
a = class(a,'asset');
otherwise
error('Wrong number of input arguments')
end
The function uses a switch statement to accommodate three possible
scenarios:
• Called with no arguments, the constructor returns a default asset object.
• Called with one argument that is an asset object, the object is simply
returned.
• Called with three arguments (subclass descriptor, type, and current value),
the constructor returns a new asset object.
The asset constructor method is not intended to be called directly; it is called
from the child constructors since its purpose is to provide storage for common
data.
The Asset get Method
The asset class needs methods to access the data contained in asset objects.
The following function implements a get method for the class. It uses
capitalized property names rather than literal field names to provide an
interface similar to other MATLAB objects.
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