Why does function isscalar() return "1" for function handles?

Why does the function isscalar return a logical 1 for function handles? Working example:

test_function = @(x) x^2;

isscalar(test_function)

The above code returns a logical 1 for me. I'm running MATLAB R2018a on Ubuntu 16.04.

This came up while writing code that programmatically finds all scalar properties of an object. Not a big deal since I can use this answer as a workaround--I'm just asking out of curiosity.

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Because the documentation states that "A function handle is always scalar (1-by-1)."

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/fundamental-matlab-classes.html

MATLAB is based on the principal that everything is an array... so when function handles were added to MATLAB I guess they also had to fit inside this paradigm.