Analysing the user's input to see if it's a number or not

I created a code with the intentions of prompting the user for their inputs, with these inputs being appropriate. This means that the inputs had to be integers/real numbers and that the start time had to be smaller than the stop time with the increment being appropriate between the limits. Unfortunately, I bumped into some issues such as:

• Not knowing how to set a limit for the increment
• Code not working after trying to force the user to input a number.

My code:

%User input for start and stop times
s = 1;
prompt = {'Enter Start time:','Enter increment:','Enter Stop time:'};
title = 'Input';
resume = 'Program execution resumed';
dims = [1, 35];
answer = inputdlg(prompt,title, dims)
start = str2num(answer{1})
increment = str2num(answer{2})
stop = str2num(answer{3})


integer_check1 = isnumeric(start)
integer_check2 = isnumeric(increment)
integer_check3 = isnumeric(stop) 



while start > stop
    error = msgbox('ERROR: Start cannot be larger than Stop time. Try again')
    uiwait(error)
    disp(resume)
    answer = inputdlg(prompt,title, dims)
    start = str2num(answer{1})
    increment = str2num(answer{2})
    stop = str2num(answer{3})
    if integer_check1 == 1 | integer_check2 == 1 | integer_check3 == 1
        error2 = msgbox('ERROR: Integer Only')
        uiwait(error2)
        disp(resume)
        answer = inputdlg(prompt,title, dims)
        start = str2num(answer{1})
        increment = str2num(answer{2})
        stop = str2num(answer{3})
        disp('Working')
    end
    disp('This is legal')
end

I did my research and used the functions isreal, isnumeric and isinteger. They did not work and instead just stopped the program after i spammed random letters in the input box, no errors at all.

[Stephen23]

Your code does not change the values of integer_check1 or integer_check2 or integer_check3 inside the loop, so any values provided inside the loop are not checked by your algorithm.

Rather than str2num (which hides an evil eval inside, which can have dangerous/unexpected side effects) you would be much better off using str2double or sscanf or a regular expression.

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

"inputs had to be integers/real numbers and that the start time had to be smaller than the stop time with the increment being appropriate between the limits."

Matlab offers several input validation methods. I like validateattributes because its been around for a while and will work on older releases, it's versatile, and it has built-in error message depending on which criteria were violated.

validateattributes(start,{'numeric'},{'integer','real','<',stop},'MyFunction','start')
validateattributes(stop,{'numeric'},{'integer','real','>',start},'MyFunction','stop')
validateattributes(increment ,{'numeric'},{'integer','real','<',stop-start},'MyFunction','increment')

Example of error message:

start = 50.5; % This is not an integer, will cause an error
validateattributes(start,{'numeric'},{'integer','real','<',stop},'MyFunction','start')

Error using MyFunction
Expected start to be integer-valued.