Cell elements as comma separated input arguments for varargin function

Question

Imagine a function with a variable number of input arguments, alternately asking for a string and a value.

myfunction('string1',value1,'string2',value2,...)

eg

myfunction('A',5,'B',10)

I want to keep the ability to call the function like that and I dont want to change the evaluation of varargin inside the function. (Except ('string1','string2',...,value1,value2,...) if that helps)

But I also have my input strings and values stored in a cell array inputvar <4x1 cell> :

inputvar = 

'A'    [5]    'B'    [10]

Also this cell array has a variable length.

My intention is to call my function somehow as follows:

myfunction( inputvar )

which is obviously not working. Any ideas how I could transform my cell to a valid input syntax?

---

I already tried to generate a string like

''string1',value1,'string2',value2'

and use eval to use it in the function call. But it didn't worked out. So alternatively is there a way to transfor a string to code?

Answer 1

You should be able to do it like this:

myfunction(inputvar{:})

{:} creates a comma separated list

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EDIT: For example:

function val = myfunction(string1,value1,string2,value2)
    if string1 == 'A'
      val = value1;
    else
      val = value2;
end

myfunction('A',5,'B',10)
myfunction('B',5,'B',10)
A = {'A',5,'B',10};
myfunction(A{:})
A = {'B',5,'B',10};
myfunction(A{:})

returns:

ans =  5
ans =  10
ans =  5
ans =  10