figure command doesn't open a figure

I've got a student using matlab online, and the minimal working example is as follows:

>> figure

No errors, no figure. No windows hiding with a figure. And worse yet, can't find any other examples of this behavior to fix it!

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

Did the student accidentally create their own function named figure?

which -all figure

[Eric Jankowski]

It's unlikely since students have been using our pre-packaged livescripts without any function definitions so far, but I'll give it a shot when they're back online! Thx!

[John D'Errico]

That would be my initial reaction. Essentially, whenever some piece of MATLAB functionality fails to work as it is expected to work, you should immediately check to see if a user has created a file with that name.

[Eric Jankowski]

Same student says everything is working fine this week: Unable to replicate bug. Glad it's resolved, but seeing that spooky behavior will haunt me. Thanks for taking the time to weigh in, Steve and John!