How to correctly name and organize file classes for MATLAB?

Question

Consider the following directory structure and that C:\magic is the current MATLAB folder:

C:\magic
C:\magic\+wand
C:\magic\+hat

Now, wand and hat are MATLAB packages which may be loaded by import wand.* and import hat.*.

Consider that I may want to create an abstract class for hat inside the +hat folder:

% C:\magic\+hat\Hat.m
classdef Hat < handle
    % class implementation ...
end

and some child class:

% C:\magic\+hat\TopHat.m
classdef (Sealed) TopHat < Hat
    % class implementation
    methods
        function this = TopHat()
            this = this@Hat();
        end
    end
end

But when I do:

> import hat.*
> ha = TopHat()

I get the following error:

Error using hat.TopHat
The specified superclass 'Hat' contains a parse error or cannot be found
on MATLAB's search path, possibly shadowed by another file with the same name.

Nevertheless, I can do ha = Hat() with no error.

What is possibly happening and what is the best solution to this issue?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Try

classdef (Sealed) TopHat < hat.Hat

There's no "search-current-package-first"-routine in MATLAB (sorry for the bad name :>). So to refer to a class within a package you always have to carry the package name - even e.g. to refer to a static method of a class within its own classdef.