How MATLAB's “if” function handles multiple inputs

Question

I ran a quick test to see how if deals with multiple input values. It appears that the default behavior is to apply and to the collection of values, but I couldn't find any documentation. Can anyone confirm or provide a counterexample?

>> if([1,1,1]) disp(sprintf('hi'));end;
hi
>> if([1]) disp(sprintf('hi'));end;
hi
>> if([1,1,0]) disp(sprintf('hi'));end;

EDIT: to clarify, I don't intend to try to use this "feature," but wanted to be sure I knew how erroneous input would be handled. Suppose, for example, your code read if(my_function) and the (badly written) my_function usually returns a single value but occasionally returns multiple values. Good practice, of course , would parse the returned values appropriately and feed a single value to if .

Answer 1

I don't find any practical reason to create an if statement which depends on anything but a scalar.

Regarding what's done in MATLAB practically?
You may assume MATLAB applies the function all on the input of the if statement. This will hold as intuition given the array is non empty.

For example, if we have array - array4Example which is not empty, the statement if on the array - if(array4Example) is equivalent of the statement if on the scalar - if(all(array4Example(:))) .

This matches the documentation if the if function.