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It is sometime desirable to lock a function into memory with the mlock
function. This is typically used for dynamically linked functions in
oct-files or mex-files that contain some initialization, and it is desirable
that calling clear
does not remove this initialization.
As an example,
function my_function () mlock (); … endfunction
prevents my_function
from being removed from memory after it is called,
even if clear
is called. It is possible to determine if a function is
locked into memory with the mislocked
, and to unlock a function with
munlock
, which the following code illustrates.
my_function (); mislocked ("my_function") ⇒ ans = 1 munlock ("my_function"); mislocked ("my_function") ⇒ ans = 0
A common use of mlock
is to prevent persistent variables from being
removed from memory, as the following example shows:
function count_calls () mlock (); persistent calls = 0; printf ("count_calls() has been called %d times\n", ++calls); endfunction count_calls (); -| count_calls() has been called 1 times clear count_calls count_calls (); -| count_calls() has been called 2 times
mlock
might also be used to prevent changes to an m-file, such as in an
external editor, from having any effect in the current Octave session; A
similar effect can be had with the ignore_function_time_stamp
function.
Lock the current function into memory so that it can’t be removed with
clear
.
See also: munlock, mislocked, persistent, clear.
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