MATLAB Programming

How MATLAB Determines Which Method to Call
• Applying the function precedence order to determine which of possibly
several implementations of a method to call. This order is determined by
the location and type of function.
Determining the Dispatch Type
MATLAB first determines which argument controls the method selection.
The class type of this argument then determines the class in which MATLAB
searches for the method. The controlling argument is either
• The argument with the highest precedence, or
• The leftmost of arguments having equal precedence
User-defined objects take precedence over the MATLAB built-in classes such
as double or char. You can set the relative precedence of user-defined objects
with the inferiorto and superiorto functions, as described in “Object
Precedence” on page 9-70.
MATLAB searches for functions by name. When you call a function, MATLAB
knows the name, number of arguments, and the type of each argument.
MATLAB uses the dispatch type to choose among multiple functions of the
same name, but does not consider the number of arguments.
Function Precedence Order
The function precedence order determines the precedence of one function
over another based on the type of function and its location on the MATLAB
path. MATLAB selects the correct function for a given context by applying the
following function precedence rules, in the order given:
1 Subfunctions
Subfunctions take precedence over all other M-file functions and overloaded
methods that are on the path and have the same name. Even if the function
is called with an argument of type matching that of an overloaded method,
MATLAB uses the subfunction and ignores the overloaded method.
2 Private functions
9-73