SOME MATLAB CONCEPTS

Maarten van Walstijn

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 1

SCRIPTING , EDITING, EXECUTING

<file.m>
File.m is a ‘Matlab script’:
Contains a series of commands
command 1
command 2 (command lines) that execute a particular
…. set of instructions.
….
Can be created & edited with the Matlab
editor.

Go to within working directory

Store in ‘work’ folder Execute by typing filename Into

Matlab comand-line

>>
>>
>> file

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 2

1
Indexing

Matlab uses matrices and vectors a lot. In order to make good use
of them, one needs to understand how to ‘index’ them. That is, how
to ‘call’ specific vector elements and how to store values into
specific vector elements.

calling storing
>> y = 1:5 >> y = zeros(1,5)

y= y=

1 2 3 4 5 0 0 0 0 0

>> ym = y(2:4) >> y(3:5)= [2 1 3]

ym = y=

2 3 4 0 0 2 1 3

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 3

Vectorisation (1)

Matlab allows to perform the same computational operation

for a series of numbers within one command. For example:

>>
>> x = 1:5;
>>
>> y = 5:-1:1
>>
>> z = x + y

z=

6 6 6 6 6

>>

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 4

2
Vectorisation (2)

When using vectorised operations, one must in some cases use

A period ‘.’ before the normal operation. For example,

>> z = x.*y

z=

5 8 9 8 5

>> z = x./y

z=

0.2000 0.5000 1.0000 2.0000 5.0000

>>

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 5

‘For-Loops’
A series of commands of the same format is usually code with a
so-called ‘for-loop’. For example, we could have done the
previous exercise as follows:

N = 5;
x = 1:N;
y = N:-1:1;
z = zeros(1,N); % creating a new vector to store the result in

%%% for-loop %%%

for n=1:N
z(n) = x(n) + y(n);
end

Often it is not efficient to use a fot-loop, as it requires more code

and runs slower!.
One case in which we always need a fo-loop is when the
elements of the result-vector need to be computed recursively.
PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 6

3
SCRIPT STUCTRURE
Most computational task are based on a certain order. In the previous
examples: I n order to compute z, one must first ‘declare’ or ‘initialise’
what x and y are.
%%%% example file %%%%
Hence very often scripts tend to be %%% initialisations %%%
structured as follows: x = 1:5;
y = 5:-1:1;

Initialisations %%% calculations %%%

z1 = x + y;
z2 = x.*y;
Calculations
%%% plotting %%%
figure(1);
plot(z1);
Displays figure(2);
plot(z2);

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 7

SUBROUTINES
Subroutines can be very useful when using the same operation
more than one time. In Matlab one can do this by starting a
script with ‘function’:
%%%% example file %%%%
Subroutine scripted as:
%%% initialisations %%%
x = 1:5;
y = 5:-1:1;
function[z1,z2] = AddAndMult(x,y)
%%% calculations %%%
z1 = x + y;
[z1,z2] = AddAndMult(x,y);
z2 = x.*y;
%%% plotting %%%
figure(1);
plot(z1);
figure(2);
And saved as ‘AddAndMult.m’ plot(z2);

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 8

4
SOME PLOTTING TRICKS (1)

Different plots can be realised within one figure. For example:

plot(x1,y1,’b-’,x2,y2,’ro--’)

Plots two sets of x-y data: the first with a blue solid line, and the second
with a dashed red line plus a red circle at each data point. The same can
also be realised with:
plot(x1,y1,’b-’)
hold on;
plot(x2,y2,’ro--’)
hold off;

See ‘help plot’ for more details and options.

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 9

SOME PLOTTING TRICKS (1)

The properties of the axes often need to be specified. Here’s a few

options:

axis off; -> makes all axes disappear (data only display)

axis square; -> forces a ‘square’ shape to the axes

axis([xmin xmax ymin ymax]); -> sets the ‘view’ to specified x an y ranges.

See ‘help axis’ for more details & options.

PBASS MATLAB CONCEPTS 10