Question

I have three looped operations O1 O2 O3 each with an IF statement and the operation with the largest flag=[F1 F2 F3] value has a higher priority to run.

How can I switch between operations depending on the value of that flag ? The flag value for each operation varies with time.

For simplicity, operation 1 is going to run first, and by the end of it’s loop the flag value will be the lowest, hence operation 2 or 3 should run next. So for this example, at t=0 : F1=5 F2=3 and F3=1.

The over-simplified pseudo code for what im trying to achieve :

while 1
  find largest flag value using [v index]=max(flag)
  Run operation with highest flag value
   ..loop back..
end

I am not sure how the value of flag will be compared in between operations, and hence why I hope for someone to shed some light on the issue here.

EDIT

Currently, all operations are written in one matlab file, and each is triggered with an IF statement. The operations run systematically one after the other (depending on which one is written first in matlab). I want to avoid that and trigger them depending on the flag value instead.

Answer 1

If your operations are functions (a little hard to tell from the question), then make a cell array of function handles, there fun1 is the name of one of your actual functions.

handles = {@fun1, @fun2, @fun3}

Then you can just use the index returned from your max term to get the correct function from the array. You can pass any arguments to the function using the following syntax.

handles{index}(args)

Using the style above makes the solution scalable, so you don’t need a stack of if statements that require maintenance when the number of operations expands. If the functions are really simple you can always use lambdas (or anonymous functions in Matlab speak).

However, if you have a limited number of simple operations that are not likely to expand, you may choose to use a switch statement in your while loop instead. It conveys your intention better than a stack of if statements.

while 1
  [~, index]=max(flag);
  switch index
      case 1
          operation1
          flag = [x y z]
      case 2
          operation2
          flag = [x y z]
      otherwise
          operation3
          flag = [x y z]
    end
end