So you want to call a function that can return different numbers of outputs and you want to get a number of outputs that is only known when the code is run not when it is written?
Can you define variables with numbered names like X1, X2, X3, ... ? Yes.
% Sample data
A = magic(5);
% Preallocate the cell to hold the desired number of outputs
numOutputs = 2;
theOutputs = cell(1, numOutputs);
% Fill in the cell
[theOutputs{:}] = svd(A);
% Call the function with the same number of outputs specified explicitly
% when the code is written so we can compare to the comma-separed list
[output1, output2] = svd(A);
% Compare the two approaches
isequal(theOutputs{1}, output1)
isequal(theOutputs{2}, output2)
If you wanted to call svd with three outputs using the theOutputs cell array the only thing you'd need to change is the line that defines the numOutputs variable.
