list of varialbes used in a m file

Is there an easy way in Matlab to get the list of variables, which are called or used in a 'm' file? I received a program from a collaborator. That program (1st program) runs with several functions and generates hundreds of variables, then another program (2nd program) will use sub potions of the variables in the workspace. I do not want to rerun 1str program every time. However, if I save the whole workplace, it is about several GB per case. Thus, I hope that I can only save the variables which will be used by the 2ndprogram. How do I find a list of those vaialbes used by the 2nd program?

[Walter Roberson]

"generates hundreds of variables"

Dynamically??

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

[Stephen23]

"... and generates hundreds of variables"

And that is the bad design decision right there. Bad design decisions make code slow, complex, buggy, and hard to debug. This bad design decision has already slowed down your code development.

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/304528-tutorial-why-variables-should-not-be-named-dynamically-eval

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

No, matlab does not have a way to get the list of variables in a script. Possibly, you could cobble something together using undocumented functions such as mtree but that would be a lot of work for something that you shouldn't have to do.

In my opinion, you would be better off rewriting the code. It sounds like it is written as one monolithic huge script which is an extremely bad design. The code should use functions to subdivide tasks. Any single script/function that holds 100s of variables at once is a maintenance nightmare.

Answer 2

[Fan Mei]

Thank you for your help, Guillaume