MATLAB: Programmatically scroll to row number in the variable editor

Question

I have time series with millions of rows and I need to check what a particular value in a row and its neighbors look like.

Suppose for simplicity that I have

r = rand(100,1);

If the row I want to inspect is

ii = 50

I do NOT want to print the output on the command window with e.g. r(ii-5:ii+5,:) for the following reasons:

• the output would clutter my command window
• I want to keep the command window as thin as possible
• I want to take advantage of the variable editor functionality, e.g. to keep scrolling if the closest 5 neighbors are not sufficient

Note that simply scrolling the variable editor for very lengthy time series is just unfeasible.

My stab:

desktop = com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLDesktop.getInstance;
v       = desktop.getGroupContainer('Variables');
findjobj(v)

Now, you can see that under DTMaximizedPane > jSpreadsheetScrollPane there is a com.mathworks.mlwidgets.array.ArrayTable object with name 'VariableTable'.

However, once I pop the handle to the desktop with findjobj() (can I access it without?) I am still unsure how to scroll to my selected row of my selected variable. Any input is very much appreaciated.

Sources to Accessing the MATLAB editor and findjobj()

Also, note that on R2013a you can open a new variable editor

v = matlab.desktop.vareditor.VariableEditor('r')
v.open

but I have no clue on how to scroll it.

Answer 1

The full answer with links to a not-so-trivial problem can be found in a guest post on http://undocumentedmatlab.com/blog/variables-editor-scrolling/