MATLAB Object-Oriented Programming

Representing Polynomials with Classes

In this section...

“Object Requirements” on page 19-2

“DocPolynom Class Members” on page 19-2

“DocPolynom Class Synopsis” on page 19-4

“The DocPolynom Constructor” on page 19-13

“Remove Irrelevant Coefficients” on page 19-14

“Convert DocPolynom Objects to Other Types” on page 19-15

“Overload disp for DocPolynom” on page 19-17

“Display Evaluated Expression” on page 19-18

“Redefine Indexed Reference” on page 19-19

“Define Arithmetic Operators” on page 19-21

Object Requirements

This example implements a class to represent polynomials in the MATLAB language. The

design requirements are:

• Value class behavior—a polynomial object should behave like MATLAB numeric
  variables when copied and passed to functions.


• Specialized display and indexing


• Objects can be scalar only. The specialization of display and indexing functionality
  preclude normal array behavior.


• Arithmetic operations


• Double converter simplifying the use of polynomial object with existing MATLAB
  functions that accept numeric inputs.

DocPolynom Class Members

The class definition specifies a property for data storage and defines a folder

(@DocPolynom) that contains the class definition.

The following table summarizes the properties defined for the DocPolynom class.

19 Defining Custom Data Types