A flag to indicate whether or not the int function has successfully computed a symbolic integral

The example below indicates my problem. In the first case, matlab cannot integrate the function provided to it and simply returns the computation I asked it to evaluate. In the second case, matlab is successful and returns a symbolic expression. The output argument of both `int` computations is of class `sym`, but, obviously, one is useful while the other is not. I could, of course, distinguish between them by searching for the string `int` in `char(Ans)` but that's a pretty inelegant thing to do.

Thanks!

 f = @(x)((x+10)*exp(-x)/(sqrt(x*x+20*x)));
  int(f,x,0,1);
  Ans= int((exp(-x)*(x + 10))/(x^2 + 20*x)^(1/2), x, 0, 1) 
  class(Ans) 
  syms b
  Ans = int(x^2,x,0,b)
  class(Ans)

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

It appears your only alternative is to inspect the result, as int returns only one argument, with no flag indicating "success" at all. If that result contains the sub-string 'int', then you have not been successful.

[Leo Simon]

That's what I've been doing, but it's clearly not bulletproof, since the variable itself could contain the substring int.

[John D'Errico]

You could search for 'int('. That will resolve some problems. Of course, anything that starts with the string 'int(' as the first 4 characters will be clear, but that will miss many cases.