why are MATLAB build-in functions suddenly undefined??

hello, suddenly, i did ot changed anything, some MATLAB build in functions (in my case "colormap" and "ylim") does not work anymore.... the .m-files are still in place and the path is set correctly.

any ideas??

best, adam

[Stephen23]

How do you know that they are not working properly? Are you getting an error message, a warning, or some unexpected results?

If you want help please give us the complete error/warning text, and also show us how you can calling these functions. If you don't actually tell us any real information (e.g. "I am calling this..., MATLAB prints this..."), then we have to guess what you are doing...

Also show us the complete output of these commands:

 which colormap -all
 which ylim -all

[Adam Zabicki]

hi, yes of course some more informations are helpful, my bad...

the output of

colormap hsv

is

Undefined function or variable 'colormap'.

The same for any ylim() code.

The output of

which colormap -all
which ylim -all

is

'colormap' not found.
'ylim' not found.

I searched for the colormap.m file within the microsoft explorer and the path to this file is set within MATLAB.

Because the output of

which plot3 -all

is

built-in (C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2016a\toolbox\matlab\graph3d\plot3)

and the ylim and colormap functions are located in exactly this folder (C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2016a\toolbox\matlab\graph3d).

[John D'Errico]

And just to be clear, if you use the path command, it will list the graph3d directory as one of the directories on your path? For example, on my machine, I would see this as part of my search path:

.../MATLAB_R2016a.app/toolbox/matlab/graph3d/

If that is true, then the first thing I'd do is check your drive, using whatever disk checking utility you have available. Verify that it has not become corrupted. I'd verify the disk permissions for that directory to see if they had been changed in some way.

[Adam Zabicki]

yes, the folder is the search path. ok, i'll perform chkdsk on my windows-drive...

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Try typing these in your Command Window:

restoredefaultpath 
rehash toolboxcache

If those don’t work to give you access to the built-in functions, contact MathWorks Tech Support.

[Adam Zabicki]

YEAH! That did it!!

thank you!!

and what exactly was the problem...???

[Star Strider]

My pleasure!

For some reason, the default path and toolbox cache occasionally get corrupted. The reasons probably vary, but the two steps I keep at hand (and suggested here) are the first steps to try whenever MATLAB stops finding its functions. If those don’t work, then Tech Support is the next option.

[Adam Zabicki]

i'll bookmark this page :)

[Star Strider]

That works. Another option is to copy those two commands to a .m file with an easy-to-find, descriptive file name, then running the file when the need arises. That’s what I do with some configuration commands I occasionally need to run.

If you can’t run the file for whatever reason, you can just open it in the Editor and copy and paste the commands to your Command Window and run them from there.