do you need to initialize a persistent variable? in matlab

In Matlab, to initialize a persistent variable that retains its value between function calls, you can use the persistent keyword followed by the variable name. Here is an example demonstrating how to initialize a persistent variable:

main.m
function output = myFunction(input)
    persistent counter;
    if isempty(counter)
        counter = 0;
    end

    counter = counter + 1;
    output = input + counter;
end
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In this example, the counter variable is initialized with a value of 0 and retains its value between multiple calls to the myFunction function.