MATLAB

Variables are defined using the assignment operator, =. MATLAB is a weakly typed programming language because types are implicitly converted.[25] It is an inferred typed language because variables can be assigned without declaring their type, except if they are to be treated as symbolic objects,[26] and that their type can change. Values can come from constants, from computation involving values of other variables, or from the output of a function. For example:

>> x = 17
x =
 17

>> x = 'hat'
x =
hat

>> x = [3*4, pi/2]
x =
   12.0000    1.5708

>> y = 3*sin(x)
y =
   -1.6097    3.0000

A simple array is defined using the colon syntax: initial:increment:terminator. For instance:

>> array = 1:2:9
array =
 1 3 5 7 9

defines a variable named array (or assigns a new value to an existing variable with the name array) which is an array consisting of the values 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. That is, the array starts at 1 (the initial value), increments with each step from the previous value by 2 (the increment value), and stops once it reaches (or is about to exceed) 9 (the terminator value).

The increment value can actually be left out of this syntax (along with one of the colons), to use a default value of 1.

>> ari = 1:5
ari =
 1 2 3 4 5

assigns to the variable named ari an array with the values 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, since the default value of 1 is used as the increment.

Indexing is one-based,[27] which is the usual convention for matrices in mathematics, unlike zero-based indexing commonly used in other programming languages such as C, C++, and Java.

Matrices can be defined by separating the elements of a row with blank space or comma and using a semicolon to terminate each row. The list of elements should be surrounded by square brackets []. Parentheses () are used to access elements and subarrays (they are also used to denote a function argument list).

>> A = [16 3 2 13; 5 10 11 8; 9 6 7 12; 4 15 14 1]
A =
 16  3  2 13
  5 10 11  8
  9  6  7 12
  4 15 14  1

>> A(2,3)
ans =
 11

Sets of indices can be specified by expressions such as 2:4, which evaluates to [2, 3, 4]. For example, a submatrix taken from rows 2 through 4 and columns 3 through 4 can be written as:

>> A(2:4,3:4)
ans =
 11 8
 7 12
 14 1

A square identity matrix of size n can be generated using the function eye, and matrices of any size with zeros or ones can be generated with the functions zeros and ones, respectively.

>> eye(3,3)
ans =
 1 0 0
 0 1 0
 0 0 1

>> zeros(2,3)
ans =
 0 0 0
 0 0 0

>> ones(2,3)
ans =
 1 1 1
 1 1 1

Transposing a vector or a matrix is done either by the function transpose or by adding dot-prime after the matrix (without the dot, prime will perform conjugate transpose for complex arrays):

>> A = [1 ; 2],  B = A.', C = transpose(A)
A =
     1
     2
B =
     1     2
C =
     1     2

>> D = [0 3 ; 1 5], D.'
D =
     0     3
     1     5
ans =
     0     1
     3     5

Most functions accept arrays as input and operate element-wise on each element. For example, mod(2*J,n) will multiply every element in J by 2, and then reduce each element modulo n. MATLAB does include standard for and while loops, but (as in other similar applications such as R), using the vectorized notation is encouraged and is often faster to execute. The following code, excerpted from the function magic.m, creates a magic square M for odd values of n (MATLAB function meshgrid is used here to generate square matrices I and J containing 1:n):

[J,I] = meshgrid(1:n);
A = mod(I + J - (n + 3) / 2, n);
B = mod(I + 2 * J - 2, n);
M = n * A + B + 1;

MATLAB supports structure data types.[28] Since all variables in MATLAB are arrays, a more adequate name is "structure array", where each element of the array has the same field names. In addition, MATLAB supports dynamic field names[29] (field look-ups by name, field manipulations, etc.).

When creating a MATLAB function, the name of the file should match the name of the first function in the file. Valid function names begin with an alphabetic character, and can contain letters, numbers, or underscores. Variables and functions are case sensitive.[30]

MATLAB supports elements of lambda calculus by introducing function handles,[31] or function references, which are implemented either in .m files or anonymous[32]/nested functions.[33]

MATLAB supports object-oriented programming including classes, inheritance, virtual dispatch, packages, pass-by-value semantics, and pass-by-reference semantics.[34] However, the syntax and calling conventions are significantly different from other languages. MATLAB has value classes and reference classes, depending on whether the class has handle as a super-class (for reference classes) or not (for value classes).[35]

Method call behavior is different between value and reference classes. For example, a call to a method:

object.method();

can alter any member of object only if object is an instance of a reference class, otherwise value class methods must return a new instance if it needs to modify the object.

An example of a simple class is provided below:

classdef Hello
    methods
        function greet(obj)
            disp('Hello!')
        end
    end
end

When put into a file named hello.m, this can be executed with the following commands:

>> x = Hello();
>> x.greet();
Hello!