The funny thing is, I have at times wanted a syntax like you wrote to work in MATLAB, but it won't. We could probably find some significant issues if you did try to modify the MATLAB language so that programming syntax would work.
But you could surely write code that would do it for you though. Maybe something like this:
function [varargout] = vecsplit(ab)
varargout = mat2cell(ab(:),ones(numel(ab),1),1);
It will even work with more than 2 elements.
[a,b,c] = vecsplit([1 2 3])
If you only provide 2 outputs, it returns only the first two elements.
[a,b] = vecsplit([1 2 3])
And it works on arrays too.
[a,b,c,d] = vecsplit([1 3;2 4])
And if you wanted only the first and third elements? Hmm, I think it should work.
[a,~,c] = vecsplit([1 2 3])
But is that really easier than just the trivially easy to write
Personally, I don't see a big gain, but as you like it. I suppose this allows you to extract scalars from a vector of elements on the fly, as returned from another function. The beauty of a tool like MATLAB is you can extend it in any way you see fit.
