If no parent object is specified in the call, what is the default value for findobj()?

Question

In MatLab, if we write findobj(gca,'Type','line') then findobj will return a handle toa list the children of the current axis whose Type is line. However, what if we do not specify the parent object as gca and simply write findobj('Type','line')? Does this look search through all objects in the current work-space? search through all children of the current figure (gcf)? What exactly is the search space if you do not bother to pass in a reference to a parent object?

Answer 1

If you don't specify an object or array of objects to restrict the search to (as the first argument), then findobj will search through the root object and all of its descendants (i.e. everything).

Note that findobj will not find objects with hidden handles. You should use findall for that.