preventing access to MAT file while saveobj is working

Here's one. In order to be able to save a deep object (class with properties that are classes themselves), I save all properties into a struct recursively, and add a new field to structs that represent deep objects with their name ("CLASSNAME"). Later when loading the class, I can reconstruct these objects and overwrite their properties.

Issue is, I have a property (dependent, but doesn't have to be) that checks if a MAT file exists. So when the saveobj() method is iterating over the properties, it gets the value of this property which tries to load the MAT file that's just being saved. I could start a list of "blacklisted" properties to not query while saving, but this means hard-coding property names, which is not very elegant. Is there a way to tell if a saveobj() is currently running, or some other elegant way to write this?

Here's a minimum example code:

classdef whilesaving

properties (Dependent, Transient)

itexists

end

methods

function saveme(obj)

save('mat','obj');

end

function tf = get.itexists(obj)

mat = matfile('mat');

tf = isfield(mat,'obj');

end

function s = saveobj(obj)

s = obj2struct(obj);

%%

function s = obj2struct(obj)

if ~exist('s','var'), s = struct(); end

mobj = metaclass(obj); % can't use "findprop()" with value classes

props = {mobj.PropertyList.Name};

for n = 1:numel(props)

p = props{n};

% ADD THIS TO FIX IT: if mobj.PropertyList(n).Transient, continue; end

v = obj.(p);

if ~isobject(v) || isenum(v)

s.(p) = v;

else

sn = obj2struct(v);

sn.CLASSNAME = class(v);

s.(p) = sn;

end

end

end

end

end

end

Just run:

whilesaving().saveme

And you shall receive:

Warning: While saving an object of class 'whilesaving':

Unable to read MAT-file mat.mat: not a binary MAT-file.

> In whilesaving/saveme (line 8)

Warning: While saving an object of class 'whilesaving':

Unable to read MAT-file mat.mat: not a binary MAT-file.

> In whilesaving/saveme (line 8)

UPDATE: Okay, so just after posting the question I got the idea to make the property "Transient" and then ignore it in obj2struct, see commented line in the code. But since I already posted: any suggetsions for a cleaner implementation? :)