Is there a way to Identify the calling function within a function?

Hello!

I would like a generic function that "knows" which function called it (to set certain variables) without having to pass it through varargin or any other argument passed like myfunc(hidden_argument).

A client will get source code for the calling functions, but not for the generic function, which will operate differently for each calling function.

Thanks!

Doug

[Douglas Anderson]

Thank you once again, Adam!

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Study the dbstack function.

dbstack returns a structure containing information about the file, function name, and line number of the function call stack. The second element of the structure is the caller.

The structure will be empty if dbstack is called from the command line or by running the section in debug mode, and will contain only 1 element in the structure array if the function is called directly.

Example of stack info

stack = dbstack('-completenames')

stack =

2×1 struct array with fields:

file

name

line

% read second element in the structure array

stack(2)

ans =

struct with fields:

file: 'C:\Users\me\Documents\Matlab\myFunc.m'

name: 'myFunc'

line: 1

Use Case

stack = dbstack('-completenames');

if numel(stack) >= 2

fprintf('Caller is %s line %d in file %s.\n', stack(2).name, stack(2).line, stack(2).file)

else

fprintf('No caller.\n')

end

Note that the line number can be negative when stepping past the end of the file in debug mode.