Deletion of handle object
When the object that a handle refers to is deleted, the handle can still exist but, it will not point to anything. In a way, it will become a null handle. In the following example, we create a handle for an axes object and then display the properties of the handle after deleting the object, to verify whether the handle exists or not.
Example 3:
Matlab
% Code ax = axes; x=0:.3:3; plot(ax,x,x) |
Output:
As we can see, ax points to our axes object. Now, we shall delete the handle. And as explained above, it will delete the object that the handle refers to instead of the handle itself.
Example 4:
Matlab
% Code ax = axes; x=0:.3:3; plot(ax,x,x) delete(ax) %checking whether the handle still exists or not whos("ax") |
Output:
As can be seen, the handle still exists however, the object it refers to is deleted.
Handle Object Behavior in MATLAB
Handles in MATLAB are data type that points to an object. The handles can be used to point to an object from different references or to pass a function to another function as an input argument.
We shall not explain the creation and usage of MATLAB handles, as they are out of this article’s scope. However, MATLAB handles have some special properties that we shall discuss in this article.