Enumeration class input modification possible?

Hello fellow Matlab users.

I am having a simple enumeration class to hold some predifinded allowed values as shown below

class (Sealed = true) myMode
    enumeration
        CLRWRITE
        MAXHOLD
        MINHOLD
        AVERAGE
        VIEW
        BLANK
    end
end

I am reading a file where the above values are writen with special characters or spaces for example "CLR/WRITE" or "Max Hold". So far i am just using regexprep externally to properly format the string before enumeration.

val = "CLR/WRITE";
val = regexprep(val, '[\W]', '');
mode = myMode(val);

Unrecognized function or variable 'myMode'.

I also implemented a static method "fromString" in the class that implements the regexprep code above. But still fills clunky.

myTrace.fromString("CLR/WRITE")

methods (Static = true)
    function out = fromString(val)
        val = convertCharsToStrings(val{:});
        if isstring(val)
            val = regexprep(val, '[\W]', '');
            out = myMode(val);
        end
    end
end

I am curious if there is a way for the enumeration class to direclty accept "CLR/WRITE" as an input. Without access to a constructor, it seems imposible to implement, but I am open to suggestions. Supperclass definition maybe?

[Matt J]

what does "directly accept" mean? What would the syntax you are after look like?

[Kristian Dimitrov]

I am just wandering if there is a way to make myMode("CLR/WRITE") work. Considering that the enumeration value is CLRWRITE and due to the special character in the string matlab returns error 'CLR/WRITE' is not a member of enumeration 'myMode'.

Answer 1

[Dirk Engel]

A static method is the correct approach from an OOP perspective. In other programming languages, a static method for creating an object from a string is usally called "parse", but "fromString" is fine, too.

[Kristian Dimitrov]

That is what I was thinking as well. No sneaky way arround the problem :(. Thank you for the comment!