function with duplicate name cannot be defined

i wrote the following function and saved it as myobjective.m

Function i used

function obj= myobjective(p)
global c1meas c2meas c3meas c4meas c5meas 
%simulate model
c=simulate(p);
obj =  sum(((c(:,1)-c1meas)).^2) 
+ sum(((c(:,2)-c2meas)).^2)+sum(((c(:,2)-c3meas)).^2)+sum(((c(:,2)-c4meas)).^2)+sum(((c(:,2)-c5meas)).^2);
end

while running the function i am getting the following error ...

Error: File: myobjective.m Line: 2 Column: 15

Function with duplicate name "myobjective" cannot be defined.

i used all _my objective in command window and i got only 1 m file with that name...

pls help me guys.....

[madhan ravi]

Just change the name of your function to some other name?

[vinutha paravastu]

i tried with different names...what ever name i use i am getting same error....

[Anne Davenport]

I had the same error and it came from a very sneaky source.

My function has a large header of comments. Each comment line starts with a ' % '.

One of those ' % ' got turned into a ' ! '. That's all it took to get the "Function with duplicate name cannot be defined." error message. I can turn the error on and off with just one little ' ! '.

I hope MATLAB can get a better error message for a stray ' ! '.

[Steven Lord]

That "little" exclamation mark turns the line it starts into a command to send to the operating system. If that's the first line in the file, and the second line now starts with the keyword function, that makes the file a script with a local function inside. As stated in the section describing requirements for functions names on this documentation page "Script files cannot have the same name as a function in the file." I suspect the file and the function have the same name since without the ! the file was a function file and the best practice is to have the first (main) function in the file have the same name as the file.

Sometimes "little" characters can have a big impact! After all, there's a big difference if the balance in your bank account is $1,000 or -$1,000.

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

The error message states that the function definition is on the second line of the file, so I suspect you have other code on the first line. That makes that file a script file with a function in it, and according to the documentation "Script files cannot have the same name as a function in the file."

Rename either your script file or your function, or if you intended this file to be a function file rather than a script file remove the executable code on the first line of the file.

[vinutha paravastu]

thanku it solved my problem...

in the first line i wrote a comment with out % symbol might be it was taken as code...