## CLASS Class Support Function

Section: Object Oriented Programming

### Usage

There are several uses for the `class` function. The first version takes a single argument, and returns the class of that variable. The syntax for this form is

      classname = class(variable)

and it returns a string containing the name of the class for `variable`. The second form of the class function is used to construct an object of a specific type based on a structure which contains data elements for the class. The syntax for this version is

      classvar = class(template, classname, parent1, parent2,...)

This should be called inside the constructor for the class. The resulting class will be of the type `classname`, and will be derived from `parent1`, `parent2`, etc. The `template` argument should be a structure array that contains the members of the class. See the `constructors` help for some details on how to use the `class` function. Note that if the `template` argument is an empty structure matrix, then the resulting variable has no fields beyond those inherited from the parent classes.