Indexing a matrix that's not in the workspace

I'm reading through someone else's code and trying to understand it. One thing it would be very helpful to be able to do is to be able to see what entries are in specific places in certain matrixes without having to name them. So for example their code might have at some point:

[1,2,3,4]

What I'd like to be able to do in the Command Window is:

>> [1,2,3,4](3)

ans =

     3

but the code as written doesn't work. Is there a way to do this other than naming the variable and then checking the position?

Answer 1

[TADA]

you can write a utility function to do that

function value = debugPrint(a, i)
    value = a(i);
end

%% or using an anonymous function:
debugPrint = @(a,i) a(i);

now you can call it like that:

debugPrint([1,2,3,4], 3)

ans =

     3

or use the builtin indexing function subsref for that:

     subsref([1,2,3,4], substruct('()', {3}))