How can I index a MATLAB array returned by a function without first assigning it to a local variable?

Question

For example, if I want to read the middle value from magic(5), I can do so like this:

M = magic(5);
value = M(3,3);

to get

Answer 1

To complement Amro's answer, you can use feval instead of builtin. There is no difference, really, unless you try to overload the operator function:

BUILTIN(...) is the same as FEVAL(...) except that it will call the original built-in version of the function even if an overloaded one exists (for this to work, you must never overload BUILTIN).

>> feval('_paren', magic(5), 3, 3)               % M(3,3)
ans =
    13

>> feval('_brace', num2cell(magic(5)), 3, 3)     % C{3,3}
ans =
    13

What's interesting is that feval seems to be just a tiny bit quicker than builtin (by ~3.5%), at least in Matlab 2013b, which is weird given that feval needs to check if the function is overloaded, unlike builtin:

>> tic; for i=1:1e6, feval('_paren', magic(5), 3, 3); end; toc;
Elapsed time is 49.904117 seconds.
>> tic; for i=1:1e6, builtin('_paren', magic(5), 3, 3); end; toc;
Elapsed time is 51.485339 seconds.