Julia symbol is returned as matlab struct

[BambOoxX]

If one wants to save a symbol to a .mat file, this symbol is not stored.
See the example below

using MAT
file = matopen("test.mat","w")
write(file,"symbol",:a_symbol)
close(file)

Matlab output

>> load('test.mat')
>> symbol

symbol = 

  struct with no fields.

[JeffFessler]

AFAIK, Matlab does not support symbol types. So it seems unlikely you would be able to save a symbol to a .mat file. Probably the closest option is to convert it to a string:
write(file, "symbol", string(:a_symbol))

[BambOoxX]

@JeffFessler matlab surely does not support symbols.

The problem here is that this lack of support is not associated with a warning or an error. So one could assume that something should be expected but not an empty container.

My idea was

• as you propose implicitly converting the symbol to a string, probably as an option, same goes for reading mat files, or
• show an error if someone tries to store a symbol so that the conversion has to be performed explicitly by the user