How to Delete Arrays?

How does one delete arrays (completely) once they have served their specific purpose (saving memory & decluttering the written program)?

I do not want to rename, redimension and then reuse the array (as the coding will inevitably be more difficult to follow and debug).

[Steven Lord]

If you're writing script files, variables aren't deleted until you explicitly clear them or until the caller's workspace is destroyed. If you're running the scripts from the prompt in the Command Window they're running in the base workspace, which persists until you close MATLAB.

If you're writing function files, the function workspace (and its contents) are destroyed when the function exits after the output arguments have been returned to the caller. [It's a bit more complicated than that with persistent variables, nested functions, etc. but that statement is accurate enough for purposes of this discussion.]

So breaking your program into "bite sized chunks", extracting commonly used steps into functions, can help keep your workspaces organized.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

If "myArray" is your array name:

clear('myArray');

[Jay]

Thank you Image Analyst.

I have to get used to arrays being referred to as variables in coding terminology.

[Image Analyst]

Just to expand on this, it could be any variable -- it doesn't have to be an array. You could get rid of tables, cell arrays, structures, class objects, scalars, or whatever.

Answer 2

[per isakson]

See clear Remove items from workspace, freeing up system memory

and clearvars Clear variables from memory