Spurious fire from timer

Question: Has anyone experienced the behavior, which I describe here?

Posting questions here makes me think. This is a better version of Weird behavior when debugging code invoked by timer.

I argue that it happens that a callback is spuriously fired during debugging of code invoked by a timer. Now, I think I have a way to demonstrate the behavior; that is to reproduce the behavior.

Recipe:

1. R2012a 64bit, Win7
2. put a break-point in the subfunction, index_out_of_bounds, at line 7
3. start the function, spurious_fire_from_timer
4. at the break-point execute stk1 = dbstack;
5. open an m-file in the editor
6. at the break-point execute stk2 = dbstack;
7. inspect the stack-drop-down-list
8. run whos and {stk2.name}'
9. click [Continue] (/F5)
10. run whos and {stk1.name}'

K>> whos
  Name       Size            Bytes  Class     Attributes
  a          1x1                 8  double              
  stk2      10x1              4164  struct

Note that stk1 is not in this workspace and display the function names

K>> {stk2.name}'
ans = 
    'index_out_of_bounds'
    'invoked_by_timer'
    'timercb'
    'timercb'
    'index_out_of_bounds'
    'invoked_by_timer'
    'timercb'
    'timercb'
    'wait'
    'spurious_fire_from_timer'

[Continue] shows

    Error while evaluating TimerFcn for timer 'my_timer' 
    Index exceeds matrix dimensions.

and takes us back to the first break. Now, stk1 is in the current workspace

K>> whos
  Name      Size            Bytes  Class     Attributes
  a         1x1                 8  double              
  stk1      6x1              2582  struct              

K>> {stk1.name}'
ans = 
    'index_out_of_bounds'
    'invoked_by_timer'
    'timercb'
    'timercb'
    'wait'
    'spurious_fire_from_timer'
K>>

Comments:

• This shows that opening an m-file caused Matlab to fire a callback.
• I think this can be triggered by other user actions as well. However, I'm not sure which or whether it is intermittent.
• While experimenting with this behavior yesterday Matlab once crashed "without smoke"; just dropped dead without any crash report.
• This behavior does not occur (i.e. I failed to make it happen) with 'ExecutionMode' equal to 'singleShot'

where

    function    spurious_fire_from_timer()
        tmr = timer('Name'      , 'my_timer'        ...
            ,   'TimerFcn'      , @invoked_by_timer ...
            ,   'BusyMode'      , 'drop'            ...
            ,   'ExecutionMode' , 'fixedRate'       ...
            ,   'Period'        ,  1                ...
            ,   'StartDelay'    ,  1                ...     
            ,   'TasksToExecute',  1                ...
            ); 
        start( tmr )
        wait ( tmr )
    end

and

    function    invoked_by_timer( tmr, evnt )
        index_out_of_bounds()
        variable_not_used( tmr, evnt ) 
    end
    function    index_out_of_bounds()
        a = 17;    
        b = 18;
        c = a(2);
        variable_not_used( a, b, c ) 
    end

and

    function    variable_not_used( varargin )       
    % variable_not_used - helps keep the code analyzer box green  
    end

[Tom Shlomo]

I experience the same problem with MATLAB 2018b, WIN10

Any chance you managed to solve this?

[per isakson]

No, I'm afraid not.