How does on create a vector of class based on class name given as string?

Suppose I have a function that should create and return a vector of a certain class where the class name is passed in as a char array (i.e. string). Is it possible to do this in MATLAB? It's certainly possible if you hard-code in the class name. But I would like to be able to pass into the function the name of the class I want to create an array of. The function prototype look like this:

%vector_size is the number of elements in the vector
%element_type is the type of element the vector will initially contain (a class)
function vector = createVector(vector_size, element_type)

And suppose I have a hypothetical class called ElementA, I would create a vector of ElementA with 5 elements like this:

myvector = createVector(5, 'ElementA')

How could one go about doing this?

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

With the inbuilt data classes you can use cast:

>> A = [1,2,3]
A =
     1     2     3
>> class(A)
ans =
double
>> B = cast(A,'uint64')
B =
     1     2     3
>> class(B)
ans =
uint64

EDIT: use cast instead of typecast, as per Walter Roberson's suggestion.

[Walter Roberson]

You would probably want cast() rather than typecast()

[Stephen23]

Yes, in this case cast is probably the best answer. I will edit and add this.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

You might be able to use

zeros(1, vector_size, element_type)