Question

I would like to create a card-deck class in MatLAB. This is my first time experiencing OOP with MatLAB, and I’m fairly new to MatLAB. I’m thinking of having 2 classes:

1. card (properties: type [1-4], value [1-13])
2. deck (containing a list/vector of the cards in the deck, I will later define methods for this class; shuffle, drawCard, etc.)

card.m:

classdef card
   properties
      type;    % number: 1-4
      value;   % number: 1-13
   end
   methods
      function obj = card(type, value)
         % some code to check [type, value] should be inserted here
         obj.type = type;
         obj.value = value;
      end
   end
end

This being a raw structure of my class, functionality will come later. Now – how do I define the deck class?

I would also like to be able to let my deck class communicate with my card instances (to make sure I call the right cards: [card(1,1), card(1,2), card(1,3), …, card(4, 13)], for example.

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You need to implement a subsref function to handle indexing a deck object if you want to address directly into a deck, ie:

d = deck();
d(33)

or add a function with indexing parameters:

d = deck();
d.getCard(33)

The last one seems more appropriate, and also easier to implement:

classdef deck
    properties
        cardstack=card;
    end
    methods(Static)
        function obj = deck()
            obj.cardstack(1:52) = card(); % array creation, will fail if card has no parameterless constructor
            for ii=1:4
                for jj=1:13
                    obj.cardstack((ii-1)*13+jj) = card(ii,jj);
                end
            end
        end
    end
    methods
        function crd = getCard(obj, idx)
            if idx>=1 && idx<=52
                crd = obj.cardstack(idx);
            else
                error('Deck:getCard','Index out of range');
            end
        end
    end
end

or just use:

d.cardstack(33)

which is just the same, without the explicit error checking.

Also add an parameter-less constructor to card, so you can easily create card arrays:

function obj = card(type, value)
    if nargin==0
        % eg:
        type=NaN;
        value=NaN;
    end
    % some code to check [type, value] should be inserted here
    obj.type = type;
    obj.value = value;
end