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Chapter 03 - Variables: Declaring Variables As Values

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50 views4 pages

Chapter 03 - Variables: Declaring Variables As Values

Uploaded by

David Capital
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Chapter 03 - Variables

Table of Contents
Declaring Variables as Values ............................................................................................... 1
Accessing Stored Values ...................................................................................................... 1
Altering Variables Depending on Themselves .......................................................................... 2
A Warning About Stored Variables ........................................................................................ 3
Using ans ......................................................................................................................... 3
Clearing the Variable List ..................................................................................................... 4
Semicolons at the end! ......................................................................................................... 4

Like most programming languages, Matlab let you use variables to store values.

Declaring Variables as Values


In Matlab you do not need to declare variables or state their types, just jump in and use them. For example,
try the following:

x = 10

x =

10

This will create a variable called x (or re-use the existing one if you've previously assigned a value to x
during this session), storing 10 as its value. You can now use x in any calculation and it will be replaced
with the value 10.

You should know that in Matlab all of your variables are actually storing matrices, not just an individual
number. In the example above, the variable x is really being initialized with a one-by-one matrix that
contains the value 10. This observation will become important later.

Accessing Stored Values


Once you've stored one or more values in variables, you can recall them at any time by using the variable
names. Below is a very simple example of a session where we store some values in variables and then
use the variables later in a calculation:

width = 5

width =

length = 10

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Chapter 03 - Variables

length =

10

area = length * width

area =

50

Of course the three variables (width, length and area) created above can all be used in any subsequent
calculations that we might want to do.

Altering Variables Depending on Themselves


We can also do something that might confuse the math majors at first. Let's first do:

x=7

x =

and then

x=x+1

x =

Do you see what this does? In mathematics you may think of x=x+1 as an equation, and one with no
solution. however in this context in Matlab it's treated as an assignment. The way it works is that the right
side x+1 is evaluated to get 8 and then this is assigned to the left side x. The result of this line is that x
is now 8. We can even do more:

x=x+2

x =

10

Now x is 10.

x=x/2

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Chapter 03 - Variables

x =

Now x is 5. And so on.

A Warning About Stored Variables


It is easy to forget that a variable contains a value. Later on when we deal with functions you may need to
figure out f(x) and if you've forgotten that x=10 you may get some unexpected results. So pay attention
to the variables you've assigned.

Using ans
By now you must have noticed that when you ask Matlab to do a calculation for you (and you are not
storing the result explicitly in a variable), Matlab responds with something like:

2*5

ans =

10

Conveniently, ans is itself a variable that you can use in subsequent calculations. It simply stores whatever
the result of the most recent calculation was. Here is a simple example of a session in which we make
use of ans

15 * 3 + 4

ans =

49

ans / 7

ans =

ans + 9

ans =

16

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Chapter 03 - Variables

Clearing the Variable List


If you'd like to start from scratch and eliminate all of the variables that you've created, just type the clear
command:

clear

Be sure that you really don't need the values of the variables before you do this!

Semicolons at the end!


Last but absolutely not least, if you put a semicolon at the end of a Matlab command the command is still
executed but nothing is given as ans. For example note the difference between:

a = 3*4

a =

12

and

a = 3*4;

In both cases a is assigned the value 12 but in the second case Matlab doesn't say anything about it. Very
often in Matlab you want something done and you want Matlab to be quiet about it. Notice in all the
following chapters when and why there are semicolons sometimes but not other times. Experiment and see!

Published with MATLAB® R2014a

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