Expose builtin functions + "load/save" helpers.

[balbasty]

Should we expose a slightly nicer way of calling non-spm functions?

I've been using this in some of my code:

class Builtin:
    # Wrapper for calls to builtin functions

    class WrappedBuiltin:

        def __init__(self, name):
            self.name = name

        def __call__(self, *args, **kwargs):
            return Runtime.call(self.name, *args, **kwargs)

    def __getattr__(self, name):
        return self.WrappedBuiltin(name)

    def import_in(self, env, *args, **kwargs):
        for name in args:
            env[name] = getattr(self, name)
        for as_name, name in kwargs.items():
            env[as_name] = getattr(self, name)


builtin = Builtin()

matlab_figure = builtin.figure  # or: builtin.import_in(locals(), matlab_figure="figure")

And, related, I use this helper to save variables in a mat file:

save = Runtime.call("eval", "@(f,x) save(f,'-struct',x)")

x = ...
save("path/to/file.mat", {"x": x})

which we could implement somewhere in __wrapper__, since it's quite commonly used. Or maybe I should just use

Runtime.call("eval", "path/to/file.mat", "-struct", {"x": x})

?

[johmedr]

That's a good idea. I like the implementation, it's quite generic. However, wouldn't be the goal of having a class for builtins to expose a fixed list of builtins? (e.g., save, load, ...), so that these functions have a nice signature and description, and users know they can use them?