Documented name-value argument not recognized

Hi,

I want to specify the location where publish will save visdiff's output. I try to do this using

comp = visdiff(ancestor, fileName);
filter(comp, 'unfiltered');
report = publish(comp, 'outputDir', 'saved_reports/');

However, when running the above code, I this error message:

Error using comparisons.internal.api.PublishInputParser/parse
'outputDir' is not a recognized parameter. For a list of valid name-value pair arguments, see the documentation for this function.

However, help publish produces the following:

Name-Value Arguments
      Output Options
        format - Output format
          'html' (default) | 'doc' | 'latex' | 'ppt' | 'xml' | 'pdf'
        outputDir - Output folder
          character vector
        stylesheet - Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) file
          character vector

So why is outputDir not a recognized argument?

Best regards,

Viktor

[Viktor]

The problem is that the documentation of publish is wrong. The correct name-value argument is outputFolder.

[Stephen23]

What is the output of this command?:

which publish -all

/MATLAB/toolbox/matlab/codetools/publish.p
/MATLAB/toolbox/matlab/connector2/messageservice/+message/+internal/MessageService.p                  % message.internal.MessageService method
/MATLAB/toolbox/matlab/testframework/unittest/core/+matlab/+unittest/+internal/+mixin/Subscribable.m  % matlab.unittest.TestCase method
/MATLAB/toolbox/matlab/debugger/+matlab/+internal/+debugger/DebugFileTranslator.p                     % matlab.internal.debugger.DebugFileTranslator method

[Walter Roberson]

Using 'outputDir' as a parameter works for me in R2024b and R2025a

sample = "disp('hello')";
tn = tempname() + ".m";
td = fileparts(tn);
addpath(td)
writelines(sample, tn)
publish(tn, 'outputDir', tempdir())

[Viktor]

>> which publish -all
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2024b\toolbox\matlab\codetools\publish.p
publish is a Java method                                                                                                           % com.mathworks.addons.sidepanel.Communicator method
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2024b\toolbox\matlab\connector2\messageservice\+message\+internal\MessageService.p                        % message.internal.MessageService method
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2024b\toolbox\simulink\comparisons\model\mldesktop\matlab\+slxmlcomp\SimulinkModelComparison.p            % slxmlcomp.SimulinkModelComparison method
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2024b\toolbox\shared\comparisons\+comparisons\Comparison.p                                                % comparisons.Comparison method
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2024b\toolbox\simulink\comparisons\model\mldesktop\matlab\+slxmlcomp\+internal\SimulinkModelComparison.p  % slxmlcomp.internal.SimulinkModelComparison method

Answer 1

[Steven Lord]

The problem is that the documentation of publish is wrong. The correct name-value argument is outputFolder.

The problem is that you're looking at the documentation for the wrong publish function. You're looking at the documentation for the general publish function. The object returned by visdiff has its own publish method and it seems that method 1) is not documented as a separate function, just via the example on the visdiff documentation page and 2) uses slightly different name-value arguments from the general publish function.

Let's look at which publish function gets used for a difference object:

benchfile = which('bench.m'); % sample file
obj = visdiff(benchfile, benchfile);
which publish(obj) % ask which overload would be called by that command

/MATLAB/toolbox/comparisons/text/mldesktop/matlab/+comparisons/TextComparison.p  % comparisons.TextComparison method

and which gets used for general publishing of a file:

which publish(benchfile)

/MATLAB/toolbox/matlab/codetools/publish.p

I'll note this discrepancy in the name-value argument support to the development staff.