While assigning a variable, is the variable cleared by default before the assignment?

Hello all,

please clarify my doubt regarding variable assignment in MATLAB.

say

for iLoop=1:100%Line_1
   output=someCalculation(iLoop);%Line_2
   someOtherCalculation(output);%Line_3
   ...
   ...
       
end%Line_n

In line 2, we can see that output is written with value from someCalculation(). Is output, internally cleared before executing the next loop?

The background of my question is, one of our scripts (I realise scripts are bad. But legacy scripts), was creating a variable 'output' - (quite a huge variable - 1000s of MBytes) in every iteration.

In one of the iteration, there was memory error in Line 2. I have inserted a 'clear output' between line 1 and 2, and expect script to run without memory error.

Is my expectation correct?

In other words, while creating output for ith iteration, is the size of output from i-1 th iteration a bottleneck in terms of memory?

[Rik]

Shouldn't you be able to check this by creating an array that should fill most of your memory and comparing the results of running it with and without a clear statement?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Is output, internally cleared before executing the next loop?

No. A variable is only cleared if

• you assign something else to it. The clearing occur at the point where the assignment occurs and only then.
• it goes out of scope (e.g. a variable created inside a function is cleared when the function ends)
• you explicitly clear it

Anything else would make no sense and break a lot of code.

I have inserted a 'clear output' between line 1 and 2, and expect script to run without memory error

If someCalculation does create a GB sized output, then yes it will make some difference. The previous content of output gets cleared when you assign the new result of someCalculation and only then. So, while someCalculation is running, with its own internal variable that takes GB of memory, you also have the previous content of output sill in memory. Rather than clear I'd recommend setting output to [].

while creating output for ith iteration, is the size of output from i-1 th iteration a bottleneck in terms of memory?

Only when someCalculation is being executed.

Of course, all this assumes that you haven't made any copy of output. Otherwise, these copies still take some memory.

[ES]

Hello Guillaume,

Thanks very much for the answer. My question is specifc to 'clearing occur at the point' you have mentioned in your answer.

Do you please know what does 'at the point' mean? Whether output is cleared, and then new value stored? Or even before assigning output, MATLAB decides there wont be space for output variable (because other variables (including output) are already occupying all the available memory?

[Guillaume]

In programming, there is the concept of sequence points. This gives you guarantee that something will happen before something else. It's not documented in matlab, but it would be difficult to write deterministic code if matlab didn't follow the same rules.

In the line

output = somefunction();

The execution of somefunction is a sequence point. It must occur before anything happens to output because that function may actually use the current state of output. Therefore, somefunction will be executed, possibly creating a huge variable, then and only then, the output of the function is assigned to output clearing the previous content.

That's the theory anyway. Now, with JIT compilation, the optimiser may see that somefunction is independent of output and that the output will be cleared and do so preemptively. I'm making suppositions here, as the JIT optimisations are not documented. In any case, it would never be something you could rely on as it would depend on many things completely outside your control.

So, if you want to be guaranted that you don't temporarily use twice as much memory, yes, you need to clear the variable before executing the above line. As I said, rather than clear, you'd be better off, making it empty:

output = [];
output = somefunction();