How to assign a matrix to several several vectors at once?

Question

I notice if we want to assign a vector to several variable we can use 'deal'; but when the assigning a matrix to several vectors, it doesn't work out. For example

A=[1 2; 3 4];
A=num2cell(A);
[a, b]=deal(A{:})

It gives a error message "Error using deal (line 38) The number of outputs should match the number of inputs."

Do you know how to improve the code? Thank you!!

Answer 1

You can write your own deal very easly:

# in mydeal.m
function  varargout = mydeal(varargin)
    % Assign values in vector into variables.
    %
    % EXAMPLE 1
    % [a,b,c] = mydeal([1,2,3]);
    % EXAMPLE 2
    % some_vector = [1,2,3];
    % [a,b,c] = mydeal(some_vector);
    %
    % %results in a=1, b=2, c=3;
    %


    assert(nargout == size(varargin{1}, 2), 'Different number of in and out arguments');

    for i = 1:nargout
         varargout{i} = varargin{1}(:, i);
    end

For example:

>> [a,b] = mydeal([1 2; 3 4])

a =

     1
     3


b =

     2
     4

Or

>> [a,b, c] = mydeal([1 2 3])

a =

     1


b =

     2


c =

     3