Have a look at inputParser. My typical class constructor goes something like this:
function obj = myclass(varargin)
p = inputParser;
p.addParamValue('property1', [], @isnumeric);
p.addParamValue('property2', [], @ischar);
...
p.parse(varargin{:}); % edited this
fnames = fields(obj);
for n=1:numproperties
obj.(fnames{n}) = p.Results.(fnames{n});
end
