Delete only figure objects from workspace MATLAB 2015a

I just started using matlab with the new figure handles which now no longer are just a number, but an object of sorts.

Currently I am working with som old scripts that store a lot of different figure handles which I need to delete. I can obviously delete them one at a time, but its a lot of objects, and the names may vary every time the script run.

The reason that I need to delete the handles is that I need to store the entire workspace except for the figure handles as they produce a warning in 2015a (and possible earlier releases?).

Is there a way to use functions like clear() to delete only figure handles from the workspace in 2015a?

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

As per the documentation of close:

close all deletes all figures whose handles are not hidden.

close all hidden deletes all figures including those with hidden handles.

close all force deletes all figures, including GUIs for which CloseRequestFcn has been altered to not close the window.

Note that you can also pass an array of handles to delete which should have the same effect.

[Håvard]

Thank you for your answer. Unfortunately this does not work for me as close only closes the figures, but does not delete figure handles as far as I understand.

I have now updated the question to try to make it more explicit.

[Guillaume]

It's probably semantics but close does delete the handle:

>>hfig = figure;
>>close all
>>hfig

hfig =
   handle to deleted Figure

What I think you meant is you want to clear the variable from your workspace. Since clear only has a command form it's going to be difficult to do programmatically. However, you can certainly store the entire workspace but figure handles programmatically:

allvars = whos;
nonfigurevars = {allvars(~strcmp({allvars.class}, 'matlab.ui.Figure')).name};
save('somefile.mat', nonfigurevars{:});

[Håvard]

Thank you again. When i use the first method you propose using close all, no figure handles are removed from my workspace.

The other method, however, works just great. I didn't think of doing it that way.