MATLAB: Are the results of the size function different from the whos function Size

Question

Why are the results of the size function different from the whos function Size?

Here is an example:

>> excelstring = strfind('ABC DUMP.txt','.xls')

excelstring =

     []

>> size excelstring

ans =

     1    11

>> whos excelstring Name Size Bytes Class Attributes

excelstring      0x0                 0  double

Answer 1

Doing this:

size excelstring

Is equivalent to doing this:

size('excelstring')

Whenever you invoke a function without the parens, the remainder of your inputs are taken to be literal string(s).