I have created a MATLAB gui in order to run a certain simulation.
In this gui is one button to start the simulation. This button callback function will then excecute the calculations. This will off course result in a dataset with the results.
Furthermore in the interface is a plot area, and a selectbox to switch between different graphs, in order to show different aspects of the simulation results. Therefore the results must be available for other functions in the gui as well. This is a problem, since the callback function has no output
Two solutions I can think of are storing the dataset in a MAT-file, or using global variables. The first solution seems not really correct to me, and furthermore I learned that global variabeles must be avoided if possible. So what is the best solution here?
MATLAB offers certain functions for this. There is the function guidata, which can store one variable. This can for instance be used to pass around your gui handles. Furthermore there are the functions setappdata and getappdata. These functions are the way to transfer data between functions, and couple variables to a figure handle.
More information on the different methods can be read here.
This is supposed to be semantically more correct then using global variables. However, I am still curious why. Any comments?