Save an arbitrary number of figures from outside a function

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I have a function that returns a figure:
function fig = makefigure()
fig = figure()
end
This allows me to call the function from elsewhere and programatically save the figure that it makes. I'd like to be able to do a similar thing, but for an arbitrary number of figures. For example maybe something like:
function figs = makefigures(n)
for i = 1:n
%make a new figure here for any arbitrary number of figures, n
end
end
The problem is, I can't figure out how to return multiple figure handles from one function without specificying an explicit number of outputs (which I don't want to do). I tried putting the handles into a structure but this didn't work either.
Any thoughts on how to do this? Object oriented solutions are welcome (if that changes anything) because all this code is wrapped up inside of a classdef.

Accepted Answer

Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 13 Nov 2020
function figs = makefigures(n)
figs = gobjects(1,n);
for i = 1:n
figs(n) = figure();
end
end
  2 Comments
Scott Harris
Scott Harris on 14 Nov 2020
Thanks, was unware of gobjects!
quick note too, the line inside the forloop should use i to index, not n:
figs(i) = figure();
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 14 Nov 2020
gobjects() is not strictly necessary there, but it is a good idea. It is pre-allocating graphics handles, similar to initializing an array to its proper size by using zeros()

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