Matlab equivalent to the asterisk in Python when giving inputs to a function

Question

What I would like to achieve in Matlab is the following:

I have a function which takes some inputs.

f(x,y)

Now I have a list of which I would like to pass to the function in which each entry stands for one input of the functions.

f(x,y) = f([x,y])

I know that this is possible in Python like this:

f(x,y) = f(*[x,y])

What do I do in Matlab?

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can use a cell array. If x = {a,b} then f(x{:}) is equivalent to f(a,b) . Under the hood matlab automatically expand f(x{:}) as f(x{1},x{2},...)

For example, if we want to concatenate several strings:

x1 = 'A'
x2 = 'B'
x3 = 'C'
s = strcat(x1,x2,x3) % s = 'ABC'

is equivalent to

x = {'A','B','C'}    % Our cell 
s = strcat(x{:})     % s = 'ABC'