title: How do properties work in Object Oriented MATLAB?
body: <p>I am trying to create a MATLAB class with a member variable that's being updated as a result of a method invocation, but when I try to change the property within the class it (apperently, from what I understood from MATLAB's memory management) creates a copy of the object and then modifies it, leaving the original object's property untouched.</p>
  
  <pre><code>classdef testprop  
      properties  
          numRequests=0;  
      end  
      methods  
          function Request(this, val)  
              disp(val);  
              this.numRequests=this.numRequests+1;  
          end  
      end  
  end  
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt; a=testprop;
  &gt;&gt; a.Request(9);
  &gt;&gt; a.Request(5);  
  &gt;&gt; a.numRequests  
  
  ans = 0  
  </code></pre>