I want to right a code in MATLAB which calculates a given formula, and I want to write the code with the same notation as in the given formula. In the formula I have two different functions with the same name but that only differ in the number of the arguments: Kn(a,b) and Kn(a).
Is there a way in MATLAB to define overloading functions like in c++?
If you want to define two functions of the same name with a different number of input arguments, you should define them in the same function file and use varargin/nargin to treat the two cases:
function out=Kn(varargin)
if nargin==1
a=varargin{1};
%
%here do what Kn(a) does
%
%out=...
elseif nargin==2
a=varargin{1};
b=varargin{2};
%
%here do what Kn(a,b) does
%
%out=...
else
error('Kn accepts up to 2 input arguments!')
end
%or maybe here do what both Kn(a) and Kn(a,b) do after some initial differences
%and return 'out' here
If the two cases are similar then this is not confusing, nor cumbersome; and if the two functions are very different than you should seriously consider using separate functions with separate names. While in paper-based scientific computations you can easily distinguish between quantities based on the number of indices, this can be very confusing in programming (and I would advise against it even if it was possible to do in matlab).
