MATLAB: Am I unable to create a uimenu with the title “remove”

label;MATLABremoveuimenu

To reproduce this issue, type the following at the MATLAB command prompt:

f =uimenu(figure(1),'Label','remove')

Note that no menu item "remove" appears in the menubar of the figure. Now enter the following:

f =uimenu(figure(1),'Label','Remove')

Note that a menubar item "Remove" appears as expected.

Best Answer

This bug has been fixed in Release 14 Service Pack 3 (R14SP3). For previous product releases, read below for any possible workarounds:

The strings 'remove', 'default', and 'factory' are special strings in Handle Graphics. The purpose of these strings is discussed in Section 6 of the Handle Graphics and Properties Guide:

http://www.mathworks.com/support/tech-notes/1200/1205.html#Section6

If a string of a uicontrol or label of a uimenu needs to be set to one of these special strings, prepend a backslash (\) to the string as shown in the example below

f =uimenu(figure(1),'Label','\remove')

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Is the beginning of the string in an editable text field not visible when the string is long in MATLAB 7.0 (R14)

This bug has been fixed in Release 2007a (R2007a). For previous product releases, read below for any possible workarounds:

In MATLAB 7.0 (R14), MATLAB uses Java for creating figure windows. The observed behavior is due to the way Java displays the text.

If you are using a version of MATLAB prior to MATLAB 7.3 (R2006b), you may work around this issue by turning java figures off using the following command. Please note that this workaround will not be valid after MATLAB 7.3 (R2006b) as this feature will not be available:

feature('javafigures',0);

MATLAB: Magic strings and numbers in Matlab

uicontrol's, figure's and uimenu's use these magic strings for properties, which are strings:

   'default', 'remove', 'factory'

Such properties are e.g. 'String', 'Callback', 'Name', 'Tag', etc.

A bullet-proof workaround:

S = input('Input the button string: ', 's');
if any(strcmp(S, {'default', 'remove', 'factory'})
  S = ['\', S];
elseif any(strcmp(S, {'\default', '\remove', '\factory'})
  warning('String "%s" padded to support uicontrol!', S);
  S = [' ', S];
end
uicontrol('String', S);

Such an ugly catching of rare exceptions is a typical effect of magic strings.

When a callback function is called 'default', use the function handle instead of a string:

uicontrol('Callback', @default);

A real solution, not only a workaround, is to strictly avoid using these names as function names or as 'String' property and never allow not controllable user-input as a property. But this can be a limitation, if e.g. the ten most frequent words of an arbitrary text file should be displayed in 10 buttons.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Is the beginning of the string in an editable text field not visible when the string is long in MATLAB 7.0 (R14)

MATLAB: Magic strings and numbers in Matlab

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