Question

Does MATLAB have a “blackhole” or discard variable?

Say I’m doing something like:

[ rows cols ] = size( A ) ;

But I don’t want rows to be stored. Is there a “black hole” variable where I can send values to die?

So the assignment would be like

[ BLACKHOLE, cols ] = size( A ) ;

Where BLACKHOLE means throw the value away and don’t create a variable for it.

Answer 1

For 2009b or later, there is the tilde sign “~”

[~,cols] = size(A);

Alternatively, in your specific case

cols = size(A,2);