Why aren't the outcomes of class methods being applied to global variables:

I'm not sure why the outcomes of class methods are not being applied to global variables:

When I enter

clear(Forest_Road,shoot)

in the main script I do not receive any errors but I don't have any trees being removed from my "forest" here grouped as collection of shoot's in a non scaler array, I think this is by design (seperating class varaibles from global variables). I tried making the input argument a global variable in the class definition but it didn't affect the outcome, what am I missing?

classdef Road
    % Creation of the class road
    properties
        x;
        y;
        c;      
    end   
    methods
        % Constructer
        function obj = Road(x,y,c)
            % Construct an instance of road class
            %   Assign input properties
            obj.x = x;
            obj.y = y;
            obj.c = c;
        end     
        function chop_trees = clear(obj,shoot)
            i=1;
            j=1;
            while j~=80
                for j=1:80
                    dist = hypot([shoot(i).x] - obj.x(j), [shoot(i).y] - [obj.y(j) + obj.c]);
                    if any(dist < 2);
                        global shoot
                        shoot(i)=[];
                    end
                end
               i=i+1; 
            end
        end
    end
end

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

Your class is a value class rather than a handle class. See the description of the difference between those two types of object here.

[Alexander James]

Thank you fot the clarification, If I set my superclass Geometry < handle then my subclass Road should inherit those properties. However if type

clear(Forest_Road,Forest)

in my main script the number and execute the number of objects (trees) in my Forest still not decrease, I've checked the values calculated under dist and there objects (trees) closer than 2m

 classdef Road < Geometry
    % Creation of the class road
    properties
        c;
    end
    methods
        % Constructer
        function obj = Road(x,y,c)
            % Construct an instance of road class
            %   Assign input properties
            obj@Geometry(x,y);
            obj.x = x;
            obj.y = y;
            obj.c = c;
        end
        function clear_trees = clear(obj,Forest)
            i=1;
            j=1;
            global Forest
            while j~=80
                for j=1:80
                    dist = hypot([Forest(i).x] - obj.x(j), [Forest(i).y] - [obj.y(j) + obj.c])
                    if any(dist < 2);
                        Forest(i)=[];
                    end
                end
                i=i+1;
            end
        end
    end
end

[Alexander James]

I tried just setting the road < handle and that didn't work either