You don't, at least not the way you're asking.
Suppose you had a different method of your Robot class:
function y = battle(a, b)
end
To what would the "naked" variable x refer in that method?
- Should it always refer to the x property of the object stored in a? That would throw an error if you called the method like battle(1, RobotInstance) since in that case a would not be a Robot.
- Should it always refer to the x property of the object stored in b? Same problem just with battle(RobotInstance, 1).
- But let's say the battle method could only be called with two Robot instances. To what should x refer, a.x or b.x?
One way to avoid having to reference the property repeatedly would be to reference the property once and store its value in a local variable.
function y = battle(a, b)
% Let's assume both a and b are instances of the Robot class.
%
% % If they were numbers we could call the constructor here to
% turn them into Robot objects before trying to use them.
ax = a.x;
bx = b.x;
% Now work with ax and bx instead of a.x and b.x.
end
