Pass variable and its contents from workspace to GUI function in MATLAB

Question

I have a variable in the MATLAB workspace and I want to pass the variable name and its contents to a function in my GUI.

How do I achieve this task?

Answer 1

I'm not totally sure what you mean when you say "pass the variable name and its contents", but here's one possible solution. After you pass a set of data to a function like so:

some_function(data);  %# Pass the variable "data" to a function

You can get the variable name of the input argument from inside the function using INPUTNAME:

function some_function(inputArgument)
  name = inputname(1);  %# Will return "data" as the name of the input variable
end

EDIT: As pointed out in a comment by High Performance Mark, the variable inputArgument inside the function will contain the values stored in the variable data in the workspace of the caller.

Answer 2

If this question is related to your other most recent question, then why not build the operation into your GUI? You can use guide to create a pushbutton, and place the code under the callback function.