How to pass variadic arguments in Octave - octave

Question

I would like to implement a function duration = timer(n, f, arguments_of_f) that would measure how much time does a method f with arguments arguments_of_f need to run n times. My attempt was the following:
function duration = timer(n, f, arguments_of_f)
duration = 0;
for i=1:n
t0 = cputime;
f(arguments_of_f);
t1 = cputime;
duration += t1 - t0;
end
In another file, I have
function y = f(x)
y = x + 1;
end
The call d1 = timer(100, #f, 3); works as expected.
In another file, I have
function y = g(x1, x2)
y = x1 + x2;
end
but the call d2 = timer(100, #g, 1, 2); gives an error about undefined
argument x2, which is, when I look back, somehow expected, since I pass only
1 to g and 2 is never used.
So, how to implement the function timer in Octave, so that the call like
timer(4, #g, x1, ... , xK) would work? How can one pack the xs together?
So, I am looking for the analogue of Pythons *args trick:
def use_f(f, *args):
f(*args)
works if we define def f(x, y): return x + y and call use_f(f, 3, 4).

Answer 1

You don't need to pack all the arguments together, you just need to tell Octave that there is more than one argument coming and that they are all necessary. This is very easy to do using variadic arguments.
Your original implementation is nearly spot on: the necessary change is minimal. You need to change the variable arguments_to_f to the special name varargin, which is a magical cell array containing all your arbitrary undeclared arguments, and pass it with expansion instead of directly:
function duration = timer(n, f, varargin)
duration = 0;
for i=1:n
t0 = cputime;
f(varargin{:});
t1 = cputime;
duration += t1 - t0;
end
That's it. None of the other functions need to change.