MATLAB by rudra pratap

1.6 Basics of MATLAB
9
• Dimensioning: Dimensioning is automatic in MATLAB. No dimension statements
are required for vectors or arrays. You can find the dimensions of an
existing matrix or a vector with the size and length (for vectors only) commands.
• Case sensitivity: MATLAB is case-sensitive; that is, it differentiates between
the lowercase and uppercase letters. Thus a and A are different variables.
Most MATLAB commands and built-in function calls are typed in
lowercase letters. You can turn case sensitivity on and off with the casesen
command. However, we do not recommend it.
• Output display: The output of every command is displayed on the screen
unless MATLAB is directed otherwise. A semicolon at the end of a command
suppresses the screen output, except for graphics and on-line help commands.
The following facilities are provided for controlling the screen output:
- Paged output: To direct MATLAB to show one screen of output at
a time, type more on at the MATLAB prompt. Without it, MATLAB
fiushes the entire output at once, without reganl to the speed at which
you read.
Output format:
Though computations inside MATLAB are performed using double precision,
the appearance of floating point numbers on the screen is controlled
by the output format in use. There are several different screen output
formats. The following table shows the printed value of l01r in seven
different formats.
format short 3 1 . 4 159
format short e 3.1416e+001
format long 31 .41 592653589793
format long e 3.141592653589793e+001
format short g 31 . 4 16
format long g 31 .4159265358979
403f6a7a2955385e
format hex
format rat 3550/113
format bank 31 .42
The additional formaLs, format compact and format loose, control the
spacing above and below the displayed lines, and format + displays a + ,
-, and blank for positive, negative, and zero numbers, respectively. The
default is format short. The di::lplay funnat iB Bet by typing formo.t
type on the command line (see Fig. 2.1 on page 18 for an example).
• Command history: MATLAB saves previously typed commands in a buffer.
These commands can be recalled with the up-arrow key (f). This helps in
editing previous commands. You can also recall a previous command l!y
typing the first few characters and then pressing the T key. Alternatively, you
can double-click on a command in the Command History pane (where all your
[or pnline help
type: ,
rhlp format .