memory management - Mex files: how to return an already allocated matlab array

Question

I have found a really tricky problem, which I can not seem to fix easily. In short, I would like to return from a mex file an array, which has been passed as mex function input. You could trivially do this:

void mexFunction(int nargout, mxArray *pargout [ ], int nargin, const mxArray *pargin[])
{
   pargout[0] = pargin[0];
}

But this is not what I need. I would like to get the raw pointer from pargin[0], process it internally, and return a freshly created mex array by setting the corresponding data pointer. Like that:

#include <mex.h>

void mexFunction(int nargout, mxArray *pargout [ ], int nargin, const mxArray *pargin[])
{
  mxArray *outp;
  double *data;
  int m, n;

  /* get input array */
  data = mxGetData(pargin[0]);
  m = mxGetM(pargin[0]);
  n = mxGetN(pargin[0]);

  /* copy pointer to output array */
  outp = mxCreateNumericMatrix(0,0,mxDOUBLE_CLASS,mxREAL);
  mxSetM(outp, m);
  mxSetN(outp, n);
  mxSetData(outp, data);
  /* segfaults with or without the below line */
  mexMakeMemoryPersistent(data);
  pargout[0] = outp;
}

It doesn't work. I get a segfault, if not immediately, then after a few calls. I believe nothing is said about such scenario in the documentation. The only requirement is hat the data pointer has been allocated using mxCalloc, which it obviously has. Hence, I would assume this code is legal.

I need to do this, because I am parsing a complicated MATLAB structure into my internal C data structures. I process the data, some of the data gets re-allocated, some doesn't. I would like to transparently return the output structure, without thinking when I have to simply copy an mxArray (first code snippet), and when I actually have to create it.

Please help!

EDIT

After further looking and discussing with Amro, it seems that even my first code snippet is unsupported and can cause MATLAB crashes in certain situations, e.g., when passing structure fields or cell elements to such mex function:

>> a.field = [1 2 3];
>> b = pargin_to_pargout(a.field);   % ok - works and assigns [1 2 3] to b
>> pargin_to_pargout(a.field);       % bad - segfault

It seems I will have to go down the 'undocumented MATLAB' road and use mxCreateSharedDataCopy and mxUnshareArray.

Answer 1

You should use mxDuplicateArray, thats the documented way:

#include "mex.h"

void mexFunction(int nlhs, mxArray *plhs[], int nrhs, const mxArray *prhs[])
{
    plhs[0] = mxDuplicateArray(prhs[0]);
}