MATLAB

An Introduction
How to Use This Book
This handbook accompanies the taught sessions for the course. Each section contains
a brief overview of a topic for your reference and one or more exercises.
The document is written as a PDF, with internal links as well as links to online
documentation. Furthermore, it has been designed so that you can copy and paste
example commands from the PDF. You should have the PDF open during the taught
sessions of the course.

The Exercises
Exercises are arranged as follows:
• A title and brief overview of the tasks to be carried out
• A numbered set of tasks, together with a brief description of each
• A numbered set of detailed steps that will achieve each task
Some exercises, particularly those within the same section, assume that you have
completed earlier exercises. Your teacher will direct you to the location of files that
are needed for the exercises. If you have any problems with the text or the exercises,
please ask the teacher or demonstrator for help.
This book includes plenty of exercise activities - more than can usually be completed
during the hands-on sessions of the course. You should select some to try during the
course, while the teacher and demonstrator(s) are around to guide you. Later, you
may attend follow-up sessions at ITLP called Computer8, where you can continue
to work on the exercises, with some support from IT teachers. Other exercises are
for you to try on your own, as a reminder or an extension of the work done during
the course.

Writing Conventions
A number of conventions are used to help you to be clear about what you need to
do in each step of a task.
• In general, the word press indicates you need to press a key on the key-
board. Click, choose or select refer to using the mouse and clicking on
items on the screen.
• Names of keys on the keyboard, for example the Enter (or Return) key are
shown like this Enter.
• Multiple key names linked by a + (for example, Ctrl+Z) indicate that
the first key should be held down while the remaining keys are pressed; all
keys can then be released together.
• Words and commands typed in by the user are shown like this.
• Labels and titles on the screen are shown like this, unless there is a link to
a help file in which case they are shown as follows: help.

IT Learning Programme ii 2015

 • Drop-down menu options are indicated by the name of the options separated
by a vertical bar, for example File|Print. In this example you need to select
the option Print from the File menu. To do this, click with the mouse
button on the File menu name; move the cursor to Print; when Print is
highlighted, click the mouse button again.
• A button to be clicked will look like this.
• The names of software packages are identified like this, and the names of
files to be used like this.

Software Used
MATLAB R2014a
Windows 7

Revision Information
Version Date Author Changes Made
2.0 Nov 2010 Robert Stewart Complete rewrite
2.1 Jan 2011 Robert Stewart Update
2.2 May 2011 Robert Stewart Update
2.3 Oct 2011 Robert Stewart Update
2.4 Feb 2012 Robert Stewart Update
2.5 May 2012 Robert Stewart Update
3.0 Oct 2012 Robert Stewart Major Update
3.1 Dec 2012 Robert Stewart Update
4.0 Jan 2013 Robert Stewart 4 Session Update
4.1 May 2013 Robert Stewart Exercise Updates
4.2 Jan 2014 Robert Stewart Exercise Updates
4.3 Oct 2014 Robert Stewart New Version Up-
dates
5.0 Jan 2015 Erasmia Lyka / Tasos Pa- Version Update
pastylianou
5.1 May 2015 Erasmia Lyka Exercise Updates
6.0 Oct 2015 Erasmia Lyka Exercise Updates

Copyright
This document and the accompanying presentation slides are made available by
Erasmia Lyka, under a Creative Commons licence: Attribution, Non Commercial,
No Derivatives. Individual resources are subject to their own licencing conditions
as listed.
Screenshots in this document are copyright of The Mathworks.
The Oxford University logo and crest is copyright of Oxford University and may only
be used by Oxford University members in accordance with the Universitys branding
guidelines.

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 Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 What You Should Already Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 What you will learn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Where can I get a copy of MATLAB? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2 The MATLAB Environment 3

2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2 Desktop Tools and Development Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.3 The Command Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3.1 Controlling Command Window Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.3.2 Accessing the Command History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.4 Understanding File Locations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.5 The MATLAB Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.6 The MATLAB Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3 Matrices 11
3.1 Matrix Fundamentals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2 Matrix Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3 Matrix Concatenation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.4 Matrix Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.5 Matrix Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.6 Matrix Resizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.7 Matrix Reshaping and Shifting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.8 Matrix Sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

4 Data Types (Classes) 22

4.1 Numeric Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.2 Characters and Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
4.3 The Logical Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

5 Operators and Control Statements 25

5.1 Arithmetic Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.2 Relational Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.3 Logical Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.4 Conditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.5 Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.6 Return and Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

6 Programming Fundamentals 33
6.1 Scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6.2 Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6.3 Script Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.3.1 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.3.2 Housekeeping Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.3.3 Script Body - drawing a circle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.4 Function Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.4.1 Function Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.4.2 Help Comment Block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.4.3 Function Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

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 6.5 Modular Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6.6 Debugging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.6.1 Debugging in the MATLAB editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.6.2 Debugging in the MATLAB command prompt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6.7 Toolboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

7 Graphics 1: Figures, Axes and Graphs 43

7.1 Figures, Axes and Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
7.2 Setting up Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
7.2.1 figure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
7.2.2 subplot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
7.2.3 axes and axis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
7.3 GUI Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
7.4 Plotting Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
7.4.1 Line Graphs: plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
7.4.2 Bar Graphs: bar and barh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

8 Graphics 2: Objects and Images 56

8.1 Objects, Handles and Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
8.2 Working with Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
8.2.1 Displaying Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
8.3 Printing and Exporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

9 File Handling 62
9.1 MAT-Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
9.1.1 GUI Import and Export . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
9.2 Excel Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
9.3 Text (ASCII) Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
9.4 Binary Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

10 Performance 71
10.1 Measuring Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
10.1.1 Stopwatch timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
10.1.2 The Profiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
10.2 Improving Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
10.2.1 Preallocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
10.2.2 Vectorization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

11 What Next? 77
11.1 Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
11.2 IT Services Help Centre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
11.3 Downloadable Course Materials and More - The ITLP Portfolio . . . . . . . . . . 77
11.4 Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

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 List of Exercises
1 Getting Started with the MATLAB Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2 Setting the MATLAB Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3 Introduction to Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4 Magic Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5 Exploring MATLAB Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6 Control Statements - Basic Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
7 Fibonacci Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
8 Roots of quadratic equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
9 Function for roots of quadratic equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
10 Noughts and Crosses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
11 Interactive Plot Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
12 Data Exploration Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
13 Exploring Graphics Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
14 Printing and Exporting Graphics through the GUI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
15 Magic Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
16 Demographic statistics of UK and European Union countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
17 Measuring Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
18 Image Message Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

IT Learning Programme vi 2015

MATLAB: An Introduction

1 Introduction
Welcome to the course MATLAB: An Introduction
This booklet accompanies the course delivered by Oxford University’s IT Learning
Programme. Although the exercises are clearly explained so that you can work
through them yourselves, you will find that it will help if you attend the taught
session where you can get advice from the teacher, demonstrator and each other.
If at any time you are not clear about any aspect of the course, please make sure
you ask your teacher or demonstrator for some help. If you are away from the class,
you can get help by email from your teacher or from [email protected].

1.1 What You Should Already Know

This course covers the fundamentals of using MATLAB. No prior knowledge of
MATLAB is expected.
We will assume that you are familiar with opening files from particular folders and
saving them, perhaps with a different name, back to the same or a different folder.
The computer network in our teaching rooms may differ slightly from that which
you are used to in your College or Department; if you are confused by the differences
ask for help from the teacher or demonstrator.

1.2 What you will learn

This series of 4 sessions is intended to provide basic knowledge of core MATLAB
functionality. The sessions will cover the following topics:
Session 1: Getting Started
• The MATLAB Environment

• Matrices

• Data Types
Session 2: MATLAB Language and Programming Fundamentals
• Operators and Control Statements

• Programming Fundamentals
Session 3: Working with Graphics
• Graphics 1: Figures, Axes and Graphics

• Graphics 2: Objects and Images

Session 4: Further Programming
• File Handling

• Performance

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 MATLAB: An Introduction

1.3 Where can I get a copy of MATLAB?

Oxford University runs a software licence server that provides access to concurrent
licences to the Matlab software for any University department or college. For more
details please refer to http://www.eng.ox.ac.uk/l̃abejp/TAH/matlabTAH.html

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MATLAB: An Introduction

2 The MATLAB Environment

MATLAB (MATrix LABoratory) is a high-level programming language and interac-
tive environment for algorithm development, data visualization, data analysis, and
numeric computation. Core strengths of the system include rapid development, pow-
erful built-in functionality and extensive application-specific functionality provided
by both official toolboxes and and user-contributed code.
MATLAB includes extensive documentation, which can be accessed through both
the program help menu and the web. For example, the official Getting Started
guide is here: HelpIMatlabIGetting Started. In this section, we will introduce
the MATLAB environment and learn how to enter commands, get help, and save
and load sessions.

2.1 Overview

The MATLAB system consists of these main parts:

• Desktop Tools and Development Environment - This part of MAT-
LAB is the set of tools and facilities that help you use and become more
productive with MATLAB functions and files. Many of these tools are
graphical user interfaces. It includes: the MATLAB desktop and Com-
mand Window, an editor and debugger, a code analyzer, and browsers for
viewing help, the Workspace, and folders.

• Mathematical Function Library - This library is a vast collection of

computational algorithms ranging from elementary functions, like sum, sine,
cosine, and complex arithmetic, to more sophisticated functions like matrix
inverse, matrix eigenvalues, and fast Fourier transforms.

• The Language - The MATLAB language is a high-level matrix/array lan-

guage with control flow statements, functions, data structures, input/output,
and object-oriented programming features. It allows both “programming
in the small” to rapidly create quick programs you do not intend to reuse.
You can also do “programming in the large” to create complex application
programs intended for reuse.

• Graphics - MATLAB has extensive facilities for displaying vectors and

matrices as graphs, as well as annotating and printing these graphs. It in-
cludes high-level functions for two-dimensional and three-dimensional data
visualization, image processing, animation, and presentation graphics. It
also includes low-level functions that allow you to fully customize the ap-
pearance of graphics as well as to build complete graphical user interfaces
on your MATLAB applications.

• External Interfaces - The external interfaces library allows you to write

C and Fortran programs that interact with MATLAB. It includes facilities
for calling routines from MATLAB (dynamic linking), for calling MATLAB
as a computational engine, and for reading and writing MAT-files.
See also Product Overview

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 MATLAB: An Introduction

2.2 Desktop Tools and Development Environment

The first time you start MATLAB, the desktop appears with the following layout (I
have run a few commands for illustrative purposes):

Figure 2.1: The MATLAB Desktop: a Java GUI with several components.

The layout can be altered using the desktop Home tab Layout button:
See also the Desktop Overview
The MATLAB Desktop is a Java GUI and, as such, should appear and behave in
a similar fashion on different operating systems. The two most important Desktop
Tools are the Command Window, which usually sits in the centre of the Desktop, and
the Editor, which usually occupies a separate window (though it may be docked).
In this session, we will introduce both.

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MATLAB: An Introduction

2.3 The Command Window

The command window is used to create variables, enter commands and run programs
interactively. A command entered here is immediately processed by MATLAB to
produce a response, before the system returns a new prompt for further commands.
For example, if we enter 3 at the command prompt (type 3 and press Enter):
3

then the system returns:

ans =
3

Our command has created a variable called ans and assigned it the value 3. ans is
a special, generic variable short for answer. It is used and overwritten whenever a
statement returns a value that is not explicitly assigned to a variable.
MATLAB can perform basic arithmetic like a calculator. Entering
3+4

at the command prompt returns the value 7 in ans, overwriting the previous value.
In MATLAB + is one of a family of arithmetic operators (see section 5).

Getting Help
For help on commands and operators you can enter help followed by the com-
mand, or operator name. e.g.
help fliplr
Further information is sometimes available using doc in the same way.
doc fliplr

Each time MATLAB outputs to ans, the old value is lost. For the system to re-
member more than one thing at a time, we need to define named variables:

x = 3+4

y = 3*4

Getting Workspace Information

To see the current value of a single variable, you can enter the variable name at
the command prompt. e.g.
x
For information on all currently defined variables, you can use who and whos
who
whos
Alternatively, look at the Workspace Browser in the GUI (top right by default).

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 MATLAB: An Introduction

2.3.1 Controlling Command Window Output

As noted above, variable values are displayed in the Command Window when the
variable name is entered. However, adding a semi-colon after a variable name, or
expression, suppresses the usual output. Compare:
x

x;

To save space in program output, we can use disp to display variable values without
printing the array name.
disp(x)

A semi-colon does not suppress the output from disp.

Mathematical Display Format

The format command can be used to control the output format of numeric values
displayed in the Command Window. This does not affect computation. To view
the options, use:
help format
MATLAB has pi pre-defined as a mathematical constant. We can change the
output formatting of pi as follows:
p = pi
format long
p
format

The clc command clears the Command Windows, while the home function sends
the cursor home (to the top left of the Command Window). These look superficially
similar but the Command Window history is still visible by scrolling up for home
but not clc. Paged output can be obtained using more.

2.3.2 Accessing the Command History

Previous commands can be accessed in the Command Window by dragging and

dropping a line from the GUI Command History Browser (or double-clicking to run
immediately). Note, the Command History Browser is not docked in the Desktop
in the R2014a default layout, but this can be changed using the Layout button.
Alternatively, you can press the up arrow key to move backwards through entered
commands. In addition, partial matches can be used to find a particular line by
typing in the first few letters before pressing the up arrow key. Try typing x at the
prompt (don’t pressing enter), and then pressing the up arrow several times. Note
that a previous command selected in this way can be edited before entering again.

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MATLAB: An Introduction

2.4 Understanding File Locations

There are several important locations defined in the MATLAB system.
matlabroot is the folder where MATLAB is installed. Important, modifiable loca-
tions include the current and startup folders.
The current folder is a reference location that MATLAB uses to find files. This
folder is sometimes referred to as the current directory, current working folder, or
present working directory. It is not the same location as the operating system current
folder. You can view and change the current folder in two main ways:

• In the Command Window, use the cd or pwd commands

• On the Desktop, use the tools just above the Current Folder Browser

The startup folder is the current folder in the MATLAB application when it
starts. On Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms, a folder called userpath is
added automatically to the search path (see below) upon startup, and is the default
startup folder. On Linux platforms, you can set the userpath as the startup folder.
You can view and edit the current user path by running userpath.

2.5 The MATLAB Path

For performance reasons, MATLAB limits where it looks for files. Files are only
accessible if they are in either the current folder, or the search path. The path is a
list of folder locations where MATLAB will search for program and data files. To
see the current path:
path

In Windows, with a typical MATLAB installation, this returns something like:

MATLABPATH

H:\My Documents\MATLAB
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R200nn\toolbox\matlab\general
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R200nn\toolbox\matlab\ops
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R200nn\toolbox\matlab\lang
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R200nn\toolbox\matlab\elmat
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R200nn\toolbox\matlab\elfun
...
To edit the path, you can use addpath, rmpath, genpath, pathtool and savepath.
Alternatively, use the Set Path button on the Desktop Home tab (next to Layout):

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 MATLAB: An Introduction

2.6 The MATLAB Editor

Figure 2.2: The MATLAB Editor

The MATLAB Editor is used to view and edit MATLAB program files. Normal
MATLAB programs are text files with a .m extension and are often called M-files.
The Editor starts automatically when you create or open an M-file and provides
code highlighting and debugging features.
The simplest kind of MATLAB program is called a script. Scripts are simply a list
of commands stored in an M-file. When you run a script, the result is exactly the
same as if the commands were entered one-by-one in the command window.
To open a new (blank) script, you can use the key combination Ctrl+n, or click
the New button in the editor, or the New Script button on the desktop Home tab.
To open an existing file, you can use the edit or open commands, the key combi-
nation Ctrl+o, or click on the Open button in the editor or desktop Home tab.

Running scripts There are two main ways to run a script in MATLAB.
1. From the Command Window, you can enter the script name.
2. From the Editor, you can press F5, or click the Run button (which features
a green ’play’ triangle).

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MATLAB: An Introduction

Exercise 1. Getting Started with the MATLAB Environment

• Start MATLAB
• Change the Current Folder
• Open the PDF Handbook
• Explore the Help System

Key Functions help, doc, pwd, format

Task 1 Step 1
Start MATLAB Find MATLAB in Start Menu|All Programs, and click
on the program file (MATLAB R2014a).
Step 2
Have a look around the MATLAB Desktop, noting each
of the components introduced above (see Figure 1).
Test docking and undocking the Command History, us-
ing the Layout button.
Task 2 Step 1
Change the Current Folder To view the current folder enter pwd in the Command
Window.
Step 2
I will distribute course files to the H drive on the lab
computers. For MATLAB to operate on files in this
location, change the Current Folder to H:\MATLAB,
as described in section 2.4.
Step 1
Task 3
The PDF Handbook features internal links and links
Open the PDF Handbook
to online documentation. It has also been designed so
that you can copy and paste example commands.
Step 2
On your system (outside MATLAB), browse to H:\PDF
and open the course PDF now.
Step 3
Browse to section 2.3.1 in the PDF and copy and paste
the code example from the Mathematical Display For-
mat box into the MATLAB Command Window. Press
Enter in the Command Window to see the result.
Step 1
Task 4
Read the Getting Help box in section 2.3, and run the
Explore the Help System
example commands.
Step 2
Run help and doc on several of the commands intro-
duced in this section: e.g. help, doc, whos, disp,
format, clc, home, cd, pwd.
Step 3
In the Help Browser (opened using doc), Enter path
in the Help Browser search box (top).

Look at a few of the entries listed, navigating using the

back button (top left).

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Exercise 2. Setting the MATLAB Path

• Update the Path
• Create a startup file

Key Functions help, doc, path, addpath, genpath, userpath

Step 1
Task 1 To view the path, enter path in the Command Window.
Update the Path Hint: scroll up to view all the entries.
Step 2
To add the matlab folder to the MATLAB path, run
addpath(’H:\matlab’). If copying and pasting these
commands, you may need to remove spurious spaces.
Enter path to view the changes.
Step 3
To generate path locations for all subfolders within the
matlab folder, run genpath(’H:\matlab’). Use doc
addpath and doc genpath to find out more.
Step 4
Combining steps 2 and 3, add the whole
matlab folder tree to the path by running
addpath(genpath(’H:\matlab’)). You can use
the up arrow key to modify your previous command
(see section 2.3.2). Run path to view the changes.
Step 1
A startup.m file is a user-created script that runs
when MATLAB starts. It should normally go in the
Task 2
userpath location. Run doc startup for details.
Create a startup file
Step 2
To begin creating a startup file, open a new script in
the Editor by clicking the New Script button on the
Desktop Home tab, , and undock if docked:
Step 3
Add the path-updating command from Task 1, Step 4
into the script (you can use copy and paste).
Step 4
Add a second line to your script to update the current
folder, using cd(’H:\matlab’).
Step 5
In the Command Window, run userpath and note the
location.
Step 6
In the Editor, click the save button and save your script
in the userpath location, with file name startup.m.
Step 7
Exit MATLAB and restart. Note the Current Folder
and updated path after startup. Finally, make sure to
delete the startup.m file for the next group.

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3 Matrices

3.1 Matrix Fundamentals

• The most basic MATLAB data structure is the matrix: a two-dimensional,

rectangular structure capable of storing multiple elements of data in an
easily accessible format.

• The elements of a matrix must all be of the same data type (see section
4) (numeric, character, logical etc.), but here we will focus on numeric
matrices.

• MATLAB uses two-dimensional matrices to store single elements and linear

series of elements as well. In these cases, the dimensions are 1-by-1 and 1-by-
N (or N -by-1) respectively. For numeric data, special meaning is sometimes
attached to 1-by-1 matrices, which are scalars, and to matrices with only
one row or column, which are vectors.

• MATLAB also supports data structures that have more than two dimen-
sions. These data structures are referred to as multidimensional arrays in
the MATLAB documentation, and indeed the matrix is really a special case
of an n-dimension array, with n=2 (see section 4). In this section, we will
focus on two-dimensional matrices.

3.2 Matrix Creation

There are many ways to create a matrix in MATLAB. In section 2.3, the code
examples with defined variables created simple matrices to store scalar numeric data.
A simple way to create two-dimensional matrices is to use the matrix constructor
operator, [ ]. For example,
A = [6 3 2 8; 5 1 3 7; 1, 6, 7, 2;4,5,4,1]

A =
6 3 2 8
5 1 3 7
1 6 7 2
4 5 4 1

Each row of the matrix is terminated with a semi-colon, while the elements within
each row are separated by either commas or spaces. Spaces matter when dealing
with signed numeric data, and commas are less error-prone. Compare:
[7 -2 +5], [7 - 2 + 5], [7, - 2, +5]

Because matrices are rectangular, all rows in a matrix must have the same number
of elements and MATLAB will return an error if this condition is violated.
B = [6 3 2 8; 5 1 3]

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In addition to the matrix constructor operator, MATLAB also has a number of built-
in functions (commands) for creating particular kinds of matrix. Frequently-used
examples include the following.
ones Create a matrix (or array) of all ones
zeros Create a matrix of all zeros
rand Create a matrix of uniformly distributed random numbers
randn Create a matrix of normally distributed random numbers

Generating Numeric Sequences: The Colon Operator

Numeric sequences are useful for indexing and they can be created in MATLAB
using the colon operator. The colon operator (first:last) generates a vector
of sequential numbers from the first value to the last. The default sequence is
made up of incremental values, each 1 greater than the previous one, even if the
end value is not an integral distance from the start:
D = 4:7, D = 4:7.5
D =
4 5 6 7
The numeric sequence does not have to be made up of positive integers. It can
include negative numbers and fractional numbers as well:
D = -1.5:1.5
D =
-1.5000 -0.5000 0.5000 1.5000
If the last value is lower than the first, MATLAB will return an empty matrix:
D = 7:4
D =
Empty matrix: 1-by-0
For a sequence with non-default stepping, use (first:step:last), where step
can be any real value (positive or negative):
D = 4:.5:7
D =
4.0000 4.5000 5.0000 5.5000 6.0000 6.5000 7.0000
or
D = 7:-.5:4
D =
7.0000 6.5000 6.0000 5.5000 5.0000 4.5000 4.0000

3.3 Matrix Concatenation

Matrix concatenation is the process of joining one or more matrices to make a new
matrix. The brackets [ ] operator discussed above serves not only as a matrix
constructor, but also as the concatenation operator. The expressions C = [A B] or

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C = [A,B] horizontally concatenates matrices A and B. The expression C = [A;B]

vertically concatenates them. E.g.
E = [A;C]

Caution: Horizontal(vertical) concatenation requires an equal number of rows(columns).

An alternative to using the [ ] operator for concatenation are the three functions
cat, horzcat, and vertcat. For example, the following commands give the same
result as E = [A;C]:
E = cat(1,A,C)

E = vertcat(A,C)

Another useful concatenation function is repmat, which creates a matrix composed

of tiled copies of a smaller matrix. For example,
F = [1,2,3;4,5,6];

G = repmat(F,2,3)

replicates the matrix F two times vertically and 3 times horizontally.

G =
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
4 5 6 4 5 6 4 5 6
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
4 5 6 4 5 6 4 5 6

3.4 Matrix Indexing

To reference a single element in a matrix, you can use either row-column index-
ing, A(row,column), or linear indexing A(ind), where matrix elements are counted
downward through successive columns.
A =
6 3 2 8
5 1 3 7
1 6 7 2
4 5 4 1

A(3,2), A(7)

ans =
6

To convert between index styles, use sub2ind and ind2sub, where sub refers to
row-column indexing. E.g.
linearindex = sub2ind(size(A),3,2)

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linearindex =
7

Accessing Sequential Elements: The Colon Operator Returns

With either row-column or linear indexing, a single index can be replaced by an
integer-valued numeric sequence to specify multiple elements.
A(2,1:3)
ans =
5 1 3
A(1:3:16)
ans =
6 4 6 3 8 1
A(2:3,1:3)
ans =
5 1 3
1 6 7
In indexing, the keyword end designates the last element in a particular dimension.
A(2,2:end)
ans =
1 3 7
The colon by itself refers to all elements.
A(2,:)
ans =
5 1 3 7
A(:)
ans =
6
5
1
4
3
...

For non-sequential access, an integer-valued matrix can also be used for indexing.
A([1,4,9])

ans =
6 4 2

Logical true and false states are represented in MATLAB as 1 and 0, respectively
(see section 4). Logical values can be used for matrix indexing in MATLAB and
this is an efficient and general method for selecting arbitrary matrix elements. A

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logical indexing matrix is normally the same size as the matrix being accessed and
the indexing operation here is based on the position of true values in the indexing
matrix. In the following example, we use logical indexing to blank out the smaller
values in A.
L = A<5

L =
0 1 1 0
0 1 1 0
1 0 0 1
1 0 1 1

A(L) = 0

A =
6 0 0 8
5 0 0 7
0 6 7 0
0 5 0 0

3.5 Matrix Information

Various built-in functions in MATLAB reveal information about matrices. The
following functions return information regarding matrix size and shape:
size The length of each dimension.
length The length of the longest dimension.
numel The total number of elements.
Here are a few examples:
size(F)

ans =
2 3

length(F)

ans =
3

numel(F)

ans =
6

Size and length are particularly useful and frequently used functions.
Certain functions test the data type of a matrix, returning a logical value to indi-
cate the result (see section 4). These include the generic isa function and specific
functions such as isfloat, isinteger, isnumeric, and islogical.

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Other functions test the structure of a matrix, such as isvector, isscalar and
isempty. These function are useful for avoiding errors caused by special cases. For
example, say you have a program designed to perform an operation on paired data
stored in a 2-by-N matrix, where N may vary. In the general case, with N > 1, we
could use length to determine the number of data pairs, but this approach may fail
for N = 1 (where length is 2), and N = 0 (where length is 0). Calls to isvector
and isempty could check for these special cases.

3.6 Matrix Resizing

Matrices in MATLAB can be dynamically resized provided the resulting matrix
remains rectangular.
Matrix expansion can be achieved via concatenation as introduced above. Alterna-
tively, it is possible to write to a location outside the current bounds of a matrix.
In this case, MATLAB automatically pads it with zeros where a row or column is
not completely specified. For example:
F = [1,2,3;4,5,6];

F(1,5) = 3

F =
1 2 3 0 3
4 5 6 0 0

You can add a block of numbers in the same way:

F = [1,2,3;4,5,6];

F(1:2,5:6) = 8

F =
1 2 3 0 8 8
4 5 6 0 8 8

Conversely, you can delete rows and columns from a matrix by assigning the empty
array [] to those rows or columns.
F(:,6) = []

F =
1 2 3 0 8
4 5 6 0 8

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3.7 Matrix Reshaping and Shifting

The following functions modify matrix shape or ordering

flipud Flip matrix in up/down direction.
fliplr Flip matrix in left/right direction.
flipdim Flip matrix in the specified direction (1 for up/down).
rot90 Rotate matrix anti-clockwise by 90 degrees.
transpose Flip matrix about its main diagonal, turning row vectors into
column vectors and vice versa. This is equivalent to the .’
operator (for more on operators see section 5).
reshape Modify the shape of a matrix. B = reshape(A,m,n) returns
the m-by-n matrix B whose elements are taken column-wise
from A. An error results if A does not have m*n elements.
circshift Circularly shift matrix contents.
Here are a few illustrative examples:

F = [1,2,3;4,5,6]

F =
1 2 3
4 5 6

fliplr(F)

ans =
3 2 1
6 5 4

transpose(F)

ans =
1 4
2 5
3 6

reshape(F,3,2)

ans =
1 5
4 3
2 6

circshift(F,[0,1])

ans =
3 1 2
6 4 5

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3.8 Matrix Sorting

The MATLAB sort function sorts matrix elements along a specified dimension,
using sort(A,1) to sort along columns and sort(A,2) to sort along rows. As with
many built-in functions, omitting the specified dimension causes the function to
operate column-wise, i.e. sort(A) is equivalent to sort(A,1).
A = [6 3 2 8; 5 1 3 7; 1, 6, 7, 2;4,5,4,1]

A =
6 3 2 8
5 1 3 7
1 6 7 2
4 5 4 1

sort(A)

ans =
1 1 2 1
4 3 3 2
5 5 4 7
6 6 7 8

sort(A,2)

ans =
2 3 6 8
1 3 5 7
1 2 6 7
1 4 4 5

By default, sort sorts in ascending order, but an additional argument can be used
to specify descending-order sorting:
sort(A,2,’descend’)

ans =
8 6 3 2
7 5 3 1
7 6 2 1
5 4 4 1

sortrows keeps elements of each row in its original order, but sorts the rows accord-
ing to the order of the elements in a specified column (the first by default).
sortrows(A)

A =
1 6 7 2
4 5 4 1
5 1 3 7
6 3 2 8

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Exercise 3. Introduction to Matrices

• Create a matrix
• Matrix concatenation
• Matrix information
• Matrix indexing
• Matrix resizing and sorting

Key Functions [ ], zeros, ones, cat, horzcat, vertcat, length,

size, numel, clc, transpose, reshape, sort
Step 1
Task 1
Create a matrix A of 3 rows and 4 columns using the
Create a matrix
matrix constructor operator [ ], and assign random
numbers to each element.
Step 2
Create a matrix B of 3 rows and 2 columns, in which
all elements are all ones.
Step 3
Create a matrix C of 2 rows and 5 columns, in which
all elements are all zeros.
Task 2 Step 1
Matrix concatenation Concatenate matrices A and B horizontally into a new
matrix D. Display the resulting matrix in the command
window.
Step 2
Concatenate matrices C and D vertically into a new ma-
trix E. Display the resulting matrix in the command
window.
Task 3 Step 1
Matrix information Using already available MATLAB functions identify the
size of matrix E and make sure that the output is the
expected one. Display the number of rows, columns
and the total number of elements in the matrix.
Step 1
Clear your command window using clc command. Dis-
Task 4
play matrix E on your command window.
Matrix indexing
Step 2
Display the element in the 2nd row and 3rd column of
matrix E. Make sure that the result is the expected one.
Step 3
Display all the elements in the 2nd row.
Step 4
Display all the elements in the 3rd column.
Step 5
Display the elements in the 2nd row from the 3rd column
until the last column of matrix E.

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Step 1
Task 5 Create a matrix F that is actually part of matrix E.
Matrix resizing and sorting More specifically F should consist of the rows 2 until 4
and columns 1 until 4 of matrix E.
Step 2
Identify the size of each dimension of the new matrix F
and display them on the command window.
Step 3
Assuming now that matrix F has m rows and n columns,
reshape matrix F in order to have n rows and m
columns.
Step 4
Create a matrix G that will be matrix F sorted along
column in a descending order.

Exercise 4. Magic Matrices

• Create a magic square
• Replicate the magic square
• Restore the original square

Key Functions magic, sum, diag, repmat, isequal, reshape

Step 1
Task 1
A magic square is a square matrix which has the special
Create a magic square
properties that if you take the sum along any row, col-
umn or either main diagonal, you get the same result.
Step 2
Open a new script in the Editor. The first line should
create a magic square of size 3, using the magic func-
tion as follows: A = magic(3). Save the script as
magic matrices.m on the H drive, and run the script.
Step 3
Add lines to the script to verify that the rows, columns
and main diagonal of the square add up to the same
number using sum and diag. Use help and doc to un-
derstand these functions. You can nest commands as
in Exercise 2.
Step 1
Task 2
Add lines using repmat to tile A four times vertically
Replicate the magic square
and two times horizontally, assigning the output to B
(B = repmat(A,...)). See section 3.3 for guidance.
Step 2
Check the row, column and diagonal sums of B.
Step 3
Replicate B, one time vertically and two times horizon-
tally, assigning the output to C. Is C magic?

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Step 1
Task 3 After running the script created so far, look at the el-
Restore the original square ements of A, B and C in the Command Window (type
in the variable name and press Enter).
Step 2
The original magic square (A) can be extracted from C
using row-column sequential indexing. Try it, assigning
the output to (D). See section 3.4 for guidance.
Step 3
Add a line to verify that D is equal to A using isequal.
Step 4
The elements of A can also be extracted from C using
linear indexing, taking every 4th value starting from 1
and ending at a suitable number to extract 9 elements
in total. Try this and assign the output to E. Consider
how you could convert E into the original magic square
form and test this in your script.

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4 Data Types (Classes)

There are many different data types, or classes, supported in MATLAB. For an
overview, see IFundamental MATLAB Classes

Figure 4.1: Fundamental MATLAB Data Types

4.1 Numeric Classes

The default type for numerical data is double precision floating point (or double).
A double occupies 64-bits of memory. Single precision floats (singles) are supported
in more recent versions of MATLAB, and they occupy 32-bits at the cost of lower
precision. Signed and unsigned integer types are also defined.

Converting between types

You can convert between data types using the functions described in:
doc datatypes
For example:
format long
x = pi
y = single(x)
z = uint8(x)
whos

Not all functions work for all data types. For example, sin is a built in MATLAB
trigonometric function which is not defined for integer types.

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4.2 Characters and Strings

Text data are represented in MATLAB using the char or character data type. A
character in MATLAB is actually an integer value converted to its Unicode UTF-16
character equivalent (see char for details).
A string is a vector of characters. String variables are normally surrounded by single
quotes, and highlighted in pink.

name = [’Alan ’ ’M. ’ ’Turing’]

Strings are useful when working with and displaying text data, displaying warning
and error messages during program execution, and naming variables and files.
Strings are also commonly used to provide categorical inputs to MATLAB commands
(functions). See the Function and Command Syntax box in section 9.1 for further
details.
num2str is a function that converts numbers to character or string values. This can
be useful for labelling figures, and working with numbered files. Here is an example
of how num2str can be combined with matrix concatenation (recall section 3.3) to
reference a numbered file:

filename = [’DataFile’,num2str(400)]

filename =
DataFile400

str2num (or str2double) converts strings to numeric values, which can be useful
when data has been imported from an ASCII file for example.

4.3 The Logical Class

The logical data type represents a logical true or false state as 1 and 0, respectively.
A logical expression is a piece of matlab code that returns a logical value.

Using Logical Data

As introduced in section 3.4, logical values can be used in MATLAB for matrix
indexing. Logical values are also used in conditional statements. We will look at
these in more detail in section 5, but here is a simple example:
r = ’2’
if ischar(r)
circumference = 2*pi*str2num(r)
else
circumference = 2*pi*r
end

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Exercise 5. Exploring MATLAB Data Types

• Get help on the rand function
• Create a random whole number between 1 and 10
• Convert the number to integer and string types
• Form a file name string and save workspace to file

Key Functions rand, *, round, fix, floor, ceil, num2str, save

Task 1 Step 1
Get help on the rand Enter doc rand in the Command Window. Note the
function Description for the scalar form with no inputs.
Task 2 Step 1
Create a random whole Open a new script and add a line to run rand and assign
number between 1 and 10 the output to variable x (i.e. x=rand). Save and run
the script (don’t call it rand!).
Step 2
rand produces floating point numbers between 0 and 1.
To get a value between 1 and 10, you need to multiply
by 10 (enter help * for details). Modify the previous
command and run the script again.
Step 3
To get an integer (whole number) value, you need to
apply rounding. There are four rounding functions in
MATLAB: round, fix, floor and ceil. To choose
the correct one here, remember that a zero value is not
allowed. Modify the previous command and confirm
that x is a whole number between 1 and 10 (just run
the script a few times).
Task 3 Step 1
Convert the number to In the Workspace Browser (top right of desktop), right
integer and string types click Name and ensure Bytes and Class are selected.
Step 2
In your script, use the integer conversion functions de-
tailed in doc datatypes to convert the random number
into different integer data types. Each time use an ex-
pression like x = func(x) (e.g. x = int8(x)) to over-
write x. View the changes in the Workspace Browser.
Step 3
use num2str to convert x into a string, assigning the
response to a new variable s (s = num2str(x)).
Task 4 Step 1
Form a file name string and Use matrix concatenation with num2str (as demon-
save workspace to file strated on the previous page) to form a file name of
the form ’DataFileN’, where N is the random number.
The variable name should be filename.
Step 2
Use save(filename) to save your workspace to the
named file. The saved file should appear in your Cur-
rent Folder browser. Left click to view the contents.

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5 Operators and Control Statements

Operators and control statements add power and flexibility to MATLAB pro-
grams. Operators are used to perform arithmetic, numerical and logical operations,
using program statements that are concise and easy for a person to read.

Conditional Statements and Loops control program flow.

5.1 Arithmetic Operators

The general form of an arithmetic operator statement is:

operand1 operator operand2

There are two major types of arithmetic operations. Array operations are carried
out element by element and the operand matrices must be of the same size, unless
one is scalar. Matrix operations are defined by the rules of linear algebra. The
full stop character (.) distinguishes the array operations from the matrix operations.
For addition and subtraction, the matrix and array operations are the same, and
here the full stop is not used. Tip: It is a common error to confuse matrix and array
operators. Always consider which you should be using in a given situation. Below
is a brief summary. For further details, look here.

+ and - Addition and subtraction. A+B adds A and B. A-B subtracts B from A.
.* Array multiplication. A.*B is the element-by-element product of the
arrays A and B.
.^ Array power. A.^B is the matrix with elements A(i,j) to the B(i,j)
power.
./ Array right division. A./B is the matrix with elements A(i,j)/B(i,j).
.\ Array left division. A.\B is the matrix with elements B(i,j)/A(i,j).
* Matrix multiplication. A*B is the linear algebraic product of A and B.
For nonscalar A and B, the number of columns of A must equal the
number of rows of B.
^ Matrix power. In the non-scalar power case, the calculation here in-
volves eigenvalues and eigenvectors.
/ Matrix right division. B/A = (A’\B’)’.
\ Matrix left division. X = A\B is the solution to the equation AX = B.

5.2 Relational Operators

Relational operators share the same general form as arithmetic operators, and
are used to compare operands quantitatively, using operators like “less than”. Like
array arithmetic operators, relational operators always operate element-by-element.
If one operand is scalar, it is expanded to the size of the other operand. These
operators return a logical array reflecting the outcome of the relational test. Here
is a summary:

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< Less than

<= Less than or equal to
> Greater than
>= Greater than or equal to
== Equal to
~= Not equal to
Tip: One equals symbol is used for assignment, while a pair is used for testing
equality. Be careful not to confuse the two.

5.3 Logical Operators

Logical operators perform logical calculations and return logical values. When
the operands are non-logical numerical data types, zeros are treated as false while
all non-zeros are true. Logical operators come in two main types: element-wise for
arrays, and short-circuit for scalars. Here is a summary:
& Logical AND. A&B returns true (1) for every element location that is
true (nonzero) in both arrays, and false (0) for all other elements.
| Logical OR. A|B Returns true (1) for every element location that is
true (nonzero) in either one or the other, or both arrays, and false (0)
for all other elements.
~ Logical NOT. Complements each element of the input array. Nonzeros
become false while zeros become true.
&& Short-circuit AND
|| Short-circuit OR
For the short-circuit operators, if the outcome of the operation can be determined by
the value of the first operand, the second is not evaluated. This can be more efficient
in control statements (see below), and can also be used to avoid error conditions,
such as division by zero, by making the first operand a test for the error condition.
For example:
x = (b ~= 0) && (a/b > 2)

5.4 Conditionals
Conditional statements control program flow by selecting which blocks of code to
execute based on the value of test expressions. They allow a MATLAB program to
perform multiple tasks based on its inputs.
if statements perform selection based on the value of a logical expression. In its
basic form, an if statement has this form:
if logical-expression
statements
end

The statements within the if statement are executed only if the logical expression
is true. Otherwise those statements are skipped, and execution continues following
the end line. For example:

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if isprime(a)
disp(’prime number detected’)
end

Simple expressions can be combined by logical operators into compound expressions

(where short-circuit operation can be applied). For example:

if isprime(a) && a>100

disp(’Big prime number detected’)
end

If the logical expression evaluates to a nonscalar value (e.g. a vector), then all the
elements of the argument must be true (nonzero) for the expression to be evaluated
as true. Note also that if statements can be nested by putting one inside another.
The following example performs the same function as the preceding one:

if isprime(a)
if a>100
disp(’Big prime number detected’)
end
end

For more complex conditional evaluations, the else and elseif statements can be
incorporated into an if statement. The general form here becomes:

if expression1
statements1
elseif expression2
statements2
.
.
.
else
statements3
end

where any number of elseif groups can be used, and the else group is optional.
The code above will execute statements1 if expression1 is true. If expression1
is false, and expression2 is true, then statements2 will be executed. In all other
cases, statements3 will be executed.

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Switch statements
switch statements select between multiple code blocks based on the value of a
single variable or expression (the switch). The basic form is:
switch expression
case value1
statements1
case value2
statements2
.
.
.
otherwise
statements3
end
In a switch statement, any number of case groups can be used, and the
otherwise group is optional. In MATLAB (unlike C), if any case statement
is true, subsequent cases are not evaluated or executed.

5.5 Loops
Loop control statements enable a code block to be repeatedly executed. There are
two loop types in MATLAB: for and while.
for loops execute a code block a number of times determined on entry to the loop.
The syntax normally uses the colon operator introduced in section 3.
for index = start:increment:end
statements
end

for loops can be nested and this can be useful to access each element in a two-
dimensional matrix. However, nesting loops in MATLAB can result in slow code
execution, especially for nesting beyond two levels. Fortunately, there are ways to
avoid using heavily nested loops in many circumstances, and we will look at this in
section 10.
while loops repeat execution of a block of statements as long as a test expression is
true.
while expression
statements
end

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To avoid infinitely-repeating while loops, one or more statements inside the loop
must change the value of the test expression (although see the break statement
below). This is in contrast to the for loop, where the statements inside the loop do
not generally affect the number of loop repeats. Compare:

n=10

for i=1:n

n=n-1

end

n=10

while n>0

n=n-1

end

continue and break

continue and break statements can be used to interrupt the ongoing repeats in
a loop. The continue statement immediately passes control to the next repeat
of the loop in which it appears, skipping any remaining statements in the body
of the loop. The break statement terminates the execution of a loop and passes
control to the point following the end line in the loop.
In nested loops, continue and break statements only apply to the innermost loop
containing that statement.

5.6 Return and Keyboard

return and keyboard statements interrupt the execution of a MATLAB program.

A return statement immediately exits a running program or function, returning
control to either the keyboard or the function/script that called it (depending on
how the function was called).

A keyboard statement suspends program execution at the point where it is en-

countered, and gives control to the keyboard. Keyboard mode is indicated by a K
appearing in front of the usual command prompt. This allows the user to examine
and change variable values at any point in a running MATLAB program and can be
very useful for debugging code. Keyboard mode is terminated by entering return
at the keyboard.

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Exercise 6. Control Statements - Basic Concepts

• Create a 2D matrix
• Matrix scanning and selective display

Key Functions rand, for, length, size

Task 1 Step 1
Create a 2D matrix Using the rand function create a 2-dimensional matrix
with 8 rows and 12 columns and assign a variable to it.
Step 2
Display the whole matrix. Assuming you do not know
the dimensions of the matrix choose a function that will
provide you with this information, apply it to your ma-
trix, display the result, and make sure it is the expected
one.
Task 2 Step 1
Matrix scanning and selective Using a for loop display on the command window all
display the elements of the first row of your matrix one-by-one.
If you do not remember how to index specific elements
of a matrix, please read again section 3.4. Consider also
how you would define the start and end in the syntax of
the for loop, assuming you do not know the dimensions
of the matrix you scan.
Step 2
Using two for loops, one inside the other, display all
the elements of your matrix. The first for loop will go
through the rows and the second through the columns
of the matrix.
Step 3
Now, instead of displaying all the elements of the ma-
trix, display only those that are larger than 0.5. Con-
sider using the if-else statement within the scanning
code you have created in step 2 in order to examine the
value of an element and then display it according to the
above criterion. Evaluate the result.

Exercise 7. Fibonacci Numbers

• Open M Files
• Sum of Fibonacci numbers - Part I
• Sum of Fibonacci numbers - Part II

Key Functions for, while, disp, num2str

Task 1 Step 1
Open M File Change directory to H:\Matlab\tutorial2, and open Fi-
bonacci Sequence.m. This script is the basis of the ex-
ercise

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Step 1
Task 2
The first six numbers of the Fibonacci sequence are: 0,
Sum of Fibonacci numbers
1, 1, 2, 3, 5. In order to calculate each number Fn of the
Part I
sequence, the previous two numbers, Fn-1 and Fn-2 are
required. The formula is: Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2. Create a
matrix F that will contain the Fibonnaci sequence and
fill the first two elements with 0 and 1 respectively.
Step 2
Create a ’for’ loop that will calculate the first 20 num-
bers of the Fibonacci sequence. Every time a new num-
ber is calculated it must be displayed on the command
window.
Step 3
Create a variable sumFib that will contain the sum of
the calculated Fibonacci numbers. Initialize this vari-
able with 0. Every time a new number from the Fi-
bonacci sequence is calculated within the for loop, this
variable will be updated by adding the new number.
Step 4
When the ’for’ loop terminates, display a message re-
garding the sum of the first 20 Fibonacci numbers. Con-
sider using the function num2str to transform the value
of the sumFib variable into a string in order to be in-
corporated in the displayed message.
Task 3 Step 1
Sum of Fibonacci numbers Copy the Fibonacci Sequence.m script and rename it
Part II into Fibonacci Sequence2.m
Step 2
Replace the ’for’ loop with a ’while’ loop that will again
calculate the Fibonacci numbers, add them, and the
result must be saved again in the variable sumFib. A
criterion for the ’while’ loop is required. This criterion
should be that the summation of the Fibonacci numbers
calculated so far must not exceed 1000.
Step 3
When the ’while’ loop terminates, display a message
regarding the sum of the Fibonacci numbers calculated
so far, as well as the number of the Fibonacci numbers
required to reach the termination criterion of the ’while’
loop. In order to achieve this, consider defining a new
variable that will act as a counter of the ’while’ loop
iterations, and it must be updated at each iteration.

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Exercise 8. Roots of quadratic equation

• Open M Files
• Quadratic equation roots Part I
• Quadratic equation roots Part II

Key Functions if-else, switch, disp, num2str

Task 1 Step 1
Open M Files Open Quad Equation Roots.m in the
H:\Matlab\tutorial2 directory. This script is the
basis of the exercise.
Step 1
Task 2
The roots of a quadratic equation ax2 + bx + c = 0
Quadratic equation roots
depend on the value of the discriminant D, which is
Part I
defined as D = b2 − 4ac. Define the variables a, b, c
and initialize them with random values.
Step 2
Calculate the discriminant D.
Step 3
If D>0, the equation has two real roots. If D = 0, the
equation has one real root. Finally, if D<0, it has no
real roots. Use conditional statement ’if-else’ to display
a message in each case indicating the number of the
equations roots.
Step 4
The general
√ form of the quadratic equation roots is x =
−b ± b2 − 4ac
. In the case where there is at least one
2a
real root, calculate the corresponding roots and display
them along with the previous message.
Task 3 Step 1
Quadratic equation roots Copy the Quad Equation Roots.m script and rename it
Part II into Quad Equation Roots2.m.
Step 2
Replace the ’if-else’ conditional statement with a
’switch’ conditional statement that will again branch
the code depending on the value of the discriminant pre-
viously calculated. It will also calculate the equations
roots, if necessary, and display a relevant message.

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6 Programming Fundamentals
Rather than entering commands into MATLAB one at a time at the command line,
you can also write a series of commands to a program file that you then execute as
you would any MATLAB function.
We already explored some programming essentials in section 2.6 and exercises 2-4.
In particular, we introduced both the MATLAB Editor, and the simplest kind of
MATLAB program file (M-file): the script. In this section we will go into a little
more detail.
In actual fact, there are two kinds of M-file:
• Scripts, which do not accept input arguments or return output arguments.
They operate on data in the workspace.
• Functions, which can accept input arguments and return output arguments.
They operate in private workspaces: internal variables are local to the
function.

6.1 Scripts
Scripts are simply a list of commands stored in an M-file. When you invoke a script,
MATLAB executes the commands found in the file. The result is exactly the same
as if the commands were entered one-by-one in the command window.
Scripts share the base workspace with your interactive MATLAB session and with
other scripts. They operate on existing data in the workspace, or they can create
new data on which to operate. Any variables that scripts create remain in the
workspace after the script finishes so you can use them for further computations.

6.2 Functions
Functions are program files that can accept input arguments and return output
arguments. The names of the file and of the function should be the same.
Each function operates on variables within its own workspace, which is separate from
the workspace you access at the MATLAB command prompt. The input arguments
are the initial contents of the private function workspace, and the output arguments
are what is returned to the workspace from which the function was called. Since
functions can call functions, there can be a hierarchy of separate, private workspaces.
The first line of a function starts with the keyword function. It gives the function
name and order of arguments.

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6.3 Script Components

To study the components of a script, we will look at tutorial script1.m.

6.3.1 Comments

The first lines of the file are preceded by percent symbols, which in MATLAB
denote comments. A comment is a message to someone reading or editing the M-
file and the text is not interpreted as code by MATLAB. The first paragraph of
comments at the top of an M-file is used to explain the intended usage of the script
or function. These comments are also harvested for the MATLAB help system:
help tutorial script1.
Additional comments should be used in the body of the file to explain particular
sections or lines of code. Finally, comments are also useful for temporarily disabling
a piece of code during development. This is referred to as ‘commenting out’ code.

6.3.2 Housekeeping Code

Below the first help paragraph is a section of housekeeping code, used to keep the
MATLAB workspace and display area tidy. In the tutorial example, we use clear
to clean up the workspace, close to close figures, and home to tidy up the command
window. A commented out line gives the option of using clc instead of home.
I put housekeeping code at the start of my scripts, but it is also reasonable to put
it at the end. Limited housekeeping can also be useful in the middle of a script, but
you certainly would not want to use clear all here!

6.3.3 Script Body - drawing a circle

The script body is the main subsection of executable code. Here it draws a circle,
using built-in MATLAB trigonometric functions.
• First, the centre co-ordinates and radius of the circle are declared and re-
ported using disp.
• Next, a vector (theta) of N=1000 parameter values is created, evenly spaced
between 0 and 2pi. The standard parametric equations for a circle are
applied to calculate x and y co-ordinate pairs for the perimeter of the circle.
• Finally, the circle is plotted in a figure window, and modified to display in
the correct aspect ratio, using axis. pause is one way of interrupting pro-
gram flow, and potentially requiring human interaction with the program.

Running the script There are two main ways to run a script in MATLAB.
1. From the Command Window, you can enter the script name. Note, this
only works if the script is either in the current folder or the path.
2. From the Editor, you can press F5, or click the Run button (which features
a green ’play’ triangle).

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6.4 Function Components

To study the components of a function, open up tutorial fun1.m in the Editor. This
function performs the same operations as tutorial script1.m but is more flexible by
allowing for input arguments.

6.4.1 Function Declaration

In MATLAB, function is a special function used to declare all other functions. The
function declaration must be the first executable line of any MATLAB function, and
follows the form:
function [out1, out2, ...] = myfun(in1, in2, ...)

tutorial fun1.m has inputs called C, R and FIG, and an output called CIRCLE.

6.4.2 Help Comment Block

The help comment block is the first paragraph of comments in the function, and
normally follows the function declaration. In tutorial fun1, the help comment block
is written in the general form of standard MATLAB functions. Compare:
help tutorial fun1, help fliplr.
It is good practice (but not essential) to write help comment blocks in this form.

6.4.3 Function Body

The body of tutorial fun1 is similar to that of tutorial script1. Both script and
function perform the same basic task but there are differences:
• The calls to disp and pause have been removed in the function
• In the script, the centre co-ordinates, radius and figure number are declared
as constants, while in the function they are read in as input arguments
• In the function, a line has been added to form the output matrix

Running the function

Unlike scripts, functions generally need to be provided with input arguments.
These can be entered manually in the Command Window, or the function can be
called from another script or function (more on this below).
If you try to run a function from the Editor, MATLAB will usually report an
error since, by default, the input arguments are not specified here. However, it
is possible to create default run conditions by editing the run configuration in
the Editor. This is accessed via a drop-down menu next to the run button. By
opening this dialogue, and copying in the example code from the comment block,
we can run the function using the example argument values.

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6.5 Modular Programming

A useful MATLAB program will often need to be more complex than the simple
cases explored above. Rather than creating a large script or function that tries to
do multiple tasks, it is generally more efficient to construct a modular program from
simple building blocks. To see how this can be achieved, open tutorial script1b.m.
This example script begins with a brief help comment subsection followed by a
standard housekeeping subsection. In the script body, we see the introduction of
the input function, which is a way of introducing user interaction into a running
program. When input is called, the user is asked to enter input via a prompt string.
Below input, we see two lines calling tutorial fun1 with different inputs. Prior to
the first function call, there is a call to hold, which enables subsequent graphical
commands to be added to an existing plot.
The second function call is inside a for loop, which here means run what is inside
the loop n times with index i increasing from 1 to n, in increments of one.

Figure 6.1: Example modular program output.

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Exercise 9. Function for roots of quadratic equation

• Create M Files
• Main body of the function
• Calling the function

Key Functions if-else, switch, disp, num2str

Task 1 Step 1
Create M Files Create a new M File and name it quadEquationRoot.m.
Step 2
Within the M File define a MATLAB function accord-
ing to the form: function [out1, out2, ...] = quadE-
quationRoot(in1, in2, ...). The inputs of the function
should be the coefficients of the quadratic equation, and
the output should be an array that will contain the
equations roots.
Task 2 Step 1
Main body of the function Copy the part of the Quad Equation Roots.m script
that calculates the discriminant and the roots of the
quadratic equation into the main body of the function.
Do not include the part of the code responsible for dis-
playing messages.
Step 2
Assign the calculated roots to the elements of the out-
put array. Consider specifically the case where there
are no roots.
Step 1
Task 3
Using random inputs call the ’quadEquationRoot’ func-
Calling the function
tion from the command window and display the output.
Step 2
An alternative way to call the function is through an M
File. Create a new M File and name it CallQuadEqua-
tionRoot.m. Within this file define again the required
inputs, call the function ’quadEquationRoot’, and dis-
play a message that will include the roots calculated, if
any.

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Exercise 10. Noughts and Crosses

• Open M Files
• The players choose their symbols
• The game begins

Key Functions if-else, switch, disp, return, for, while

Task 1 Step 1
Open M Files Change directory to H:\Matlab \tutorial2 \Noughts
and Crosses and open the XandO.m script. This script
is the basis of the exercise.
Step 2
Spend some time to understand the structure of the
code according to the guidelines/comments in the code.
Task 2 Step 1
The players choose their Using the function ’input’ the program must ask from
symbols the first player to provide a string (’x’ or ’o’) that will
correspond to this players symbol. This string must
be saved to a variable, and this variable must be then
used in a conditional statement to determine the second
players symbol.
Step 1
After a player has chosen a square on the board, the
Task 3
program must check if this square is empty. An empty
The game begins
square on the ’board’ matrix has the value ’e’. Con-
sider applying a control statement that will place the
players symbol at the specified position on the board
if this position is empty. If it is not empty, a relevant
message should be displayed and the program must be
terminated.
Step 2
At this step the symbol of the current player must be
drawn on the board. The function ’drawSymbol’ in
your current folder can be used for this purpose. Then
the available squares on the board must be reduced by
one.
Step 3
A check on the board must be performed to determine
whether there is a winner. In order to do this, use the
function ’checkWin’ in your current folder. Make sure
you provide the right inputs and outputs. If the output
of the above function is equal to 1, this means that the
current player is the winner, a relevant message must
be displayed and the program must be terminated.

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Step 4
Steps1-3 must also be followed when the second player.
Make sure you copy this code at the right place and
make the necessary changes in the variables and mes-
sages to be displayed so that they correspond to the
second player.
Step 5
The board has a limited number of squares, 9 specif-
ically. So far, the program allows each player to play
only once. In order for the game to continue, one player
must play after the other and the criteria for the game
termination should be either to have a winner or to
fill completely the board. Since now only one round
of the game has been implemented in the code, a loop
needs to be introduced that will allow repetitive rounds
as long as the criteria for the termination of the game
have not been satisfied. Hint: Consider using the ’avail-
able squares’ variable, which is updated every time a
player finishes their round, as a criterion to the loop.

6.6 Debugging

Typically, in MATLAB code three types of errors might occur:

• Typographical errors: misspelling of a command or a variable that could

lead to either an error message returned by MATLAB or unpredictable
results.

• Algorithmic errors: occurring when there is an error in the process followed

by the MATLAB code to produce the desired result. A way to track such
errors, since the MATLAB does not provide error or warning messages, is
to go through the code step-by-step and compare each steps result with the
expected one.

• Syntax errors: occurring when the syntax used to call a function or to use
an operator is incorrect. In these cases, MATLAB provides you with an
error message indicating the location and type of error.

Debugging is useful mostly in the cases where it is not clear where the error is or
it originated from. There are several debugging tools available in MATLAB, and in
this section the most commonly used are presented:

6.6.1 Debugging in the MATLAB editor

Using MATLAB GUI tools: In order to go through a part of a MATLAB code,

a breakpoint can be used that stops execution of a program at a specified line.
Breakpoints are marked as red-filled circles right next to the number of a line, and
can be applied in two ways:

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• By left-clicking on the dash line next to the number of the line where we
want the breakpoint to be placed.

• By placing the cursor anywhere on the desired line and then clicking Editor
→ Breakpoints → Set/Clear (or pressing F12 on the keyboard).

When the user runs a program, the execution will stop at the line where the first
breakpoint is placed. Then the user has the following options:
• Click Continue: the execution will continue until the next breakpoint is
met. If there are no breakpoints later in the code, the program will execute
until it terminates.

• Click Step: when this option is chosen, the current line of the program
will be executed and the execution will stop at the next line. This button
provides the user with a way of investigating step-by-step the functionality
and results of the code.

• Click Step In: This option provides you access to the content of a function
called at the line where the execution of the program currently is. Then by
using Step, the user can go through each line of this function.

• Click Step Out: This option allows the user to step out of a function that
has previously stepped in without executing some or all of the lines in this
function.

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• Click Quit Debugging: This option terminates the execution of the program
and allows the user to have access to the command prompt, and edit the
m-files.

Using a try / catch block A special case of debugging is the try/catch block, and
its structure is shown below.
try
some code

catch
error handling code

end

This block is used to capture errors in specific lines in the code whose execution is
expected to fail under specific circumstances, and avoid failure of the entire program.
The part of the code that is right after the try section corresponds to the code being
executed and checked for errors, and the part of the code that is after the catch
section corresponds to the code being executed when an error has been captured.

6.6.2 Debugging in the MATLAB command prompt

Similarly to the MATLAB Editor Breakpoints menu, debugging can be performed

using specific commands in the command window. A subset of the available com-
mands is briefly described in this section.
• dbstop in file: to set a breakpoint at the first possible line in the file.
– dbstop in file at location: to set a breakpoint at the specified location
in the file.

– dbstop in file if expression: to set a breakpoint at the line in the file

where this expression exists.

– dbstop if condition: to pause execution at the line that satisfies the

condition.

• dbclear: to clear all the breakpoints

– dbclear all: to remove all breakpoints in all files.

– dbclear in file: to remove all breakpoints in the file.

• dbquit: to terminate the execution of the program and exit the debug
mode.

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6.7 Toolboxes
MATLAB Toolboxes are specialized sets of functions serving a wide variety of pur-
poses, including data analysis, data acquisition, signal and image processing, parallel
computing, statistical data analysis, controller design and implementation.
Depending on the MATLAB license there are different toolboxes available. In order
to access the installed toolboxes in a system, the ver command can be entered in
the Command Prompt, which produces a list of installed toolboxes. Then by using
the help command along with the toolbox directory name, a list of the functions
available in the specific toolboxes is produced. The available MATLAB toolboxes
are listed here: http://uk.mathworks.com/products/

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MATLAB: An Introduction

7 Graphics 1: Figures, Axes and Graphs

To begin introducing MATLAB graphics, we need to start with some terminology:

7.1 Figures, Axes and Graphs

• A figure is a MATLAB window used for graphical display.
• An axes is a 2D or 3D data space defined within a figure.
• A plot is any graphic display you can create within a figure window. Figures
can contain any number of plots and each plot is created within an axes.
• A graph is a plot of data within an axes. Most plots are graphs.
To create the graph below, we run the following code:
x = -10:.1:40;

y = [1.5*cos(x)+4*exp(-.01*x).*cos(x)+exp(.07*x).*sin(3*x)];

plot(x,y)

title (’ y = 1.5cos(x) + 4e^{-0.01x}cos(x) + e^{0.07x}sin(3x)’)

xlabel(’X Axis’)

ylabel(’Y Axis’)

Figure 7.1: The basic components of a graph.

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7.2 Setting up Figures

Various MATLAB commands are useful for setting up figures. We consider a few of
the most useful here.

7.2.1 figure

figure is a command (function) that opens or selects a figure window. Entering

figure on its own creates a new figure window with default properties, and makes
it the current figure for subsequent plotting commands. figure(h) will select figure
number h if it already exists, and create it if not.

Figure 7.2: Default Figure.

7.2.2 subplot

To place multiple plots on a single figure, in a regular tiled pattern, you can use
subplot. For example:
subplot(2,3,4)

defines a 2-by-3 grid on a figure and opens or selects the 4th subplot counting
along rows, from the top left. Note that subplot creates an axes in the position
specified. A graphics command at this point will output to this axes object. Try
plot(rand(1,10)). Another call to subplot will create/select a different axes:
subplot(2,3,2)

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It is usually a good idea to use the same tiling grid in multiple calls to subplot on
a single figure because, when subplots overlap, the existing axes is deleted.
subplot(2,4,5)

If we avoid overlaps, it is possible to create complex subplot arrangements. For

example:
subplot(2,1,2)

subplot(2,2,2)

subplot(4,4,1)

subplot(4,4,2)

subplot(4,4,5)

subplot(4,4,6)

Figure 7.3: Tiled subplot example.

With Data Linking, such a figure can be used for continuous monitoring of multiple
data streams.

For complete flexibility, you can use the position argument: subplot(’Position’,[left,
bottom, width, height]), which creates an axes at the position specified by a 4-
element numerical vector with normalised coordinates in (0,1). For example:
close all

subplot(’position’,[0.1, 0.4, 0.6 0.2])

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Figure 7.4: Positioned subplot example.

7.2.3 axes and axis

axes can be used to create an axes, and/or specify its properties. axes on its own
creates an axes object in the current figure using default properties. Alternatively,
axes(’PropertyName’,PropertyValue,...) creates an axes object having specific
property values in name-value pairs. We will cover these properties in detail in
Graphics 2, but here is a simple example:
close all

axes(’Box’,’on’,’Color’,’y’)

Figure 7.5: Example axes with defined properties.

axis is used to manipulate commonly used axes properties, such as the axis limits:
axis([xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax]). Be careful not to confuse axis and axes.

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7.3 GUI Tools

Tools for manipulating and interacting with figure graphics are available in a toolbar
at the top of the figure. We will look at these in detail in the next two exercises.

Figure 7.6: GUI Tools

Exercise 11. Interactive Plot Tools

• Open the Plot Tools
• Edit the Figure Properties
• Edit the Axes Properties
• Edit the Line Plot Properties
• The Figure Palette

Step 1
Task 1
To get started, create the graph from section 7.1, com-
Open the Plot Tools
plete with text labels, via copy and paste.
Step 2
Click the Show Plot Tools icon in the figure window.

By default, this opens the Figure Palette, Plot

Browser and Property Editor tools. These tools can
also be selected individually in the View menu.
Step 3
Each tool can be moved around and docked or undocked
from the figure, but we will leave them where they are.
Step 1
Task 2
Edit the Figure Properties Ensure Edit Plot is selected in the toolbar.
Step 2
Click the dark grey background area around the graph.
Step 3
Change the background colour by selecting from Figure
Color in the Property Editor .
Step 4
Enter a Figure Name; deselect Show Figure Number.

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Step 1
Select the axes by either clicking in the central white
Task 3
area or clicking the axes title in the Plot Browser tool.
Edit the Axes Properties
Step 2
Toggle the axes visibility off and on using the tick box
next to the axes title in the Plot Browser.
Step 3
In the Property Editor, change both the fill and line
colours to contrast with each other and the background.
Step 4
Toggle the x and x grids on and off in the Property
Editor, and toggle the box off and on.
Step 5
Examine the limits of each axis in the Property Editor
and change the font to SansSerif.
Step 1
Task 4
Select the line plot by clicking on the line in either the
Edit the Line Plot Properties
main figure window or the Plot Browser.
Step 2
In the Property Editor, try each of the Plot Types,
before returning to the original line plot.
Step 3
Try each line style, and increase line thickness to 2.0 in
the Property Editor.
Step 1
Task 5 With the Figure Palette Tool, you can add subplots to
The Figure Palette your figure, change variable names and plot types, and
add annotation to the figure.
Step 2
Add, and then delete, some Annotation features.
Step 3
The Plot Catalogue Tool offers GUI access to many plot
types. To open it, right click y in the Variables box and
choose Plot Catalogue.
Step 4
In the Plot Catalogue Tool, change Plotted Variables to
x,y, choose comet and click Plot in New Figure. Then
close the new figure and the Plot Catalogue window.

Exercise 12. Data Exploration Tools

• Zoom
• Pan
• Rotate
• Cursors
• Data Brushing
• Data Linking

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Step 1
If you have just finished the previous exercise, select
Task 1
Hide Plot Tools on the Figure Toolbar. If you need to
Zoom
generate the graph again, copy and paste the earlier
code into the Command Window.
Step 2
Select the Zoom In tool.
Step 3
Move the mouse pointer inside the axes noting how the
pointer changes to the zoom in symbol. Left click once
near the line plot and note how the display changes.
Repeat this process several times. To return to the
default zoom level, double click anywhere in the axes.
Step 4
For a more controlled zoom, drag a selection box over
an area (left click-and-hold, drag, release). The axes
is redrawn, changing the limits to display the specified
area. Double click to restore the original zoom.
Step 5
For a constrained zoom, right click in the axes with
the Zoom In tool selected, and choose Horizontal Zoom
from Zoom options. Drag a selection range to see how
this works before returning to the default zoom level.
Step 1
Task 2
Pan Select the Pan tool from the Figure Toolbar.
Step 2
Click, hold, and drag to pan.
Step 3
Pan works a lot like zoom in that double clicks return to
the default view, and there are both unconstrained (de-
fault) and axis-constrained versions available through a
right-click menu.
Step 4
Try both Horizontal and Vertical panning, before re-
turning to the default view.
Task 3 Step 1
Rotate
Select the Rotate tool from the Figure Toolbar.
Step 2
Grab the axes with a left click-and-hold, and move the
graph around in three dimensions by moving the mouse.
This option is not so useful with a two-dimensional
plot, but can be useful for visualising three-dimensional
datasets. Restore the original view with a double click.
Step 1
Task 4
Select the Cursor tool from the Figure Toolbar.
Cursors

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Step 2
Left Click somewhere on the line plot to place a cursor
(or data tip) on the graph. Left click and drag to move
the cursor around over the graph.
Step 3
To place additional data tips, right click and choose
Create New Datatip.
Step 4
Right click and select Delete All Datatips.
Step 1
Task 5
Data brushing is used to interactively select data for
Data Brushing
further analysis or modification. Select the Data Brush-
ing tool and drag a selection box inside the axes to
choose a dataset.
Step 2
Right click on the brushed data, choose Create Variable
and save the brushed data as a named variable.
Step 3
Other options in the Brush menu include Remove (to
remove the brushed data from the graph), Remove Un-
brushed, and Replace With (to replace all brushed data
point y values with a constant value).
Step 1
Task 6
Linked plots are graphs in figure windows that visibly
Data Linking
respond to changes in the current Workspace variables
they display and vice versa. Select the Data Linking
tool and note the Linked variables line that appears
below the Figure Toolbar.
Step 2
In the Command Window, alter the value of y using
y=y.*x (or similar) and observe the resulting changes
in the linked figure.
Step 3
Switch off linking by deselecting the linking tool and
note how further changes to the data values are ignored
in the unlinked plot.

7.4 Plotting Functions

Matlab includes a wide range of plotting functions, as summarised in the next two
figures. A linked version of these figures is available online.

Most plot types are accessible through the GUI, via the Plot Catalogue (see Exercise
5), but they can also be produced from the command line. In the remainder of this
section, we focus on the 2D line and bar graphs, via the exemplar functions plot
and bar.

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Figure 7.7: Two-dimensional plotting functions.

Figure 7.8: Three-dimensional plotting functions.

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7.4.1 Line Graphs: plot

plot is the standard MATLAB line plotting function. If y is a vector, then plot(y)
produces a piecewise linear graph of y versus the index of its elements, 1:length(y).
If you specify two vector arguments, plot(x,y) plots y versus x. Thus, plot(y) is
shorthand for plot(1:length(y),y). Expanding on our earlier example:
x = -10:.1:40;

y = [1.5*cos(x)+4*exp(-.01*x).*cos(x)+exp(.07*x).*sin(3*x)];

figure(1); clf;

subplot(3,1,1)

plot(y)

subplot(3,1,2)

plot(1:length(y),y)

subplot(3,1,3)

plot(x,y)

Figure 7.9: Example plot.

A simple way to alter the properties of the lineseries plotted is to add a LineSpec
string after the x,y pair, which consists of a triplet specifying Line Style, Marker
Symbol and Color (in any order). For example:
subplot(3,1,3)

plot(x,y,’r:x’)

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Figure 7.10: Example linespec plot.

Almost all high level line plotting functions accept LineSpec string arguments, so it is
well worth learning them. More detailed property manipulation is available through
PropertyName, PropertyValue pairs, as we saw above for axes. For example:
plot(x,y,’r-s’,’MarkerEdgeColor’,’b’,’MarkerFaceColor’,’y’)

Figure 7.11: Example PropertyName, PropertyValue plot.

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You can plot multiple x,y series using plot(X1,Y1,LineSpec,...,Xn,Yn,LineSpec),

but these statements can become rather long and unwieldy. An alternative is to use
hold to accumulate plots on a single axes.
hold on

plot(x,y-20,’b-s’,’MarkerEdgeColor’,’g’,’MarkerFaceColor’,’r’)

plot(x,y+20,’c-s’)

If one or both of an x, y pair is a matrix, multiple lines (one for each column) are
plotted using cycling, contrasting colours.
subplot(3,1,1)

plot(magic(9))

Figure 7.12: Example hold and matrix plots.

Finally, any call to plot can return a column vector of handles to lineseries objects,
one handle per line.

7.4.2 Bar Graphs: bar and barh

Bar graphs display vector or matrix data as vertical (bar) or horizontal (barh)
bars. bar(Y) draws one bar for each element in Y. If Y is a matrix, bar groups
the bars produced by the elements in each row. The x-axis scale ranges from 1

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up to length(Y) when Y is a vector, and the number of rows when Y is a matrix.

bar(x,Y) draws bars at locations specified in x. The ’style’ argument specifies the
choice between ’grouped’ (default), or ’stacked’ bars. For example:
close all

subplot(3,1,1)

bar(magic(5))

subplot(3,1,2)

barh(magic(5))

subplot(3,1,3)

bar(magic(5),’stacked’)

Figure 7.13: Example bar graphs.

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8 Graphics 2: Objects and Images

8.1 Objects, Handles and Properties

Figures, axes, and plots are all examples of graphics objects in MATLAB. Each
instance of an object has a unique identifier, or handle. Handles are returned by
functions that create graphics objects. For example:
close all

h1 = figure

h2 = axes(’Box’,’on’,’Color’,’y’)

In addition, handles for the current figure and current axes are returned by gcf, and
gca. Using an object handle, you can alter the properties of an existing graphics
object. You can also specify property values when you create a graphics object, as
we saw above for axes and plot.
Graphics object properties allow us to flexibly alter figure appearance. To see the
extensive range of options available, here are links to lists of Figure Properties,
Axes Properties, and Lineseries (or Chart Line) Properties, with the latter
being the type of plot object created by plot. For an overview of object properties,
use this link.
Objects are organised into a hierarchy in MATLAB, with figures being the children of
the root object, axes being children of figures and plot objects being children of axes.
The child-parent relationship within the figure→axes→plot object hierarchy can
be used to reference related components within a complex graphical display setup.

Querying and Setting Property Values

The two most important functions for fine-tuning MATLAB graphics are get
and set, which query and specify graphic object properties, respectively. get(h)
returns all properties of the graphics object identified by the handle h and their
current values:
get(gcf)
get(gca)
get(h,’PropertyName’) returns the value of the named property. Compare:
get(gcf,’Children’)
gca
set(h) returns adjustable properties and possible values for object h:
set(gcf)
set(gca)
set(h,’PropertyName’,PropertyValue,...) sets the named properties to the
specified values.
set(gca,’Color’,’k’)

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Exercise 13. Exploring Graphics Objects

• Try the tutorial script
• Adjust figure properties
• Adjust axes properties
• Adjust graph properties

Key Functions get, set, gcf, gca, legend

Step 1
Task 1
Ensure that the current folder is H:\matlab\tutorial3
Try the tutorial script
Step 2
Open and run tutorial script2.m.
Step 3
Select Save As from the Save drop-down menu and
name your copy of the script graphics script.m
Step 1
Task 2 Add a line to your script using get and gcf to examine
Adjust figure properties the object properties of the figure.
Step 2
Use set and gcf to change the background colour
(Color) to white. This can be achieved using either
a linespec-style colour character or an RGB 3-element
vector. Adding pause(1) after each new graphics com-
mand in the script will help to view sequential changes.
Step 3
Use set and gcf to set the figure position to
[200,400,700,600]. Try some alternative values.
Note the current screen resolution is given by
get(0,’ScreenSize’).
Step 4
Use set and gcf to set the figure resize property to off.
Note the effect on the figure.
Step 1
Use get and gca to examine the axes properties. You
Task 3
may want to comment out the equivalent command for
Adjust axes properties
figure properties from Task 2, Step 1.
Step 2
Use set and gca to switch off the axes box.
Step 3
Use set and gca to change x axis limits (XLim) to
[0,10].
Step 4
Use set and gca to change direction of the x axis (XDir)
to reverse.
Step 5
Use set and gca to change y tick labels (YTickLabel)
to the sequence 1:9 (see section 3.2).

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Step 1
Use handles = get(gca,’Children’) to get handles for the
Task 4
three graphs; handles will be a 3 element vector
Adjust graph properties
Step 2
Use get with (elements of) the handles vectors to ex-
amine the graph properties. Use linear matrix indexing
here. Can you work out which handle is for which line?
Step 3
Use set with handles to change the marker size in each
graph (MarkerSize).
Step 4
Use legend to give the figure a legend with text labels
for each graph.
Step 5
Use set with handles to make one graph invisible (Vis-
ible off).

8.2 Working with Images

Monochrome images are represented in MATLAB as matrices, with each pixel rep-
resented by a single matrix element. RGB colour images are handled as three-
dimensional arrays, with the first plane in the third dimension representing the red,
the second plane representing green, and the third plane representing blue.
MATLAB supports three different numeric classes for image display: double, uint16
and uint8, and image display commands interpret the data values differently de-
pending on the data type. The integer data types are most useful for storage, while
double precision is the most flexible for processing.
The major read and write functions are imread and imwrite, while imfinfo returns
information about an image file. To see a table listing the file formats supported by
these functions, run imformats.

8.2.1 Displaying Images

To display an image, use image, or imagesc. For example:

figure

imfinfo peppers.png

peppers = imread(’peppers.png’,’png’);

image(peppers)

To remove axis ticks and set the correct aspect ratio for an image you can run
axis off

axis image

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To display an image with a one-to-one mapping of matrix element to screen pixel,

you can resize the figure and axes. For example:
[m,n,z] = size(peppers);

figure(’Units’,’pixels’,’Position’,[100 100 n m])

image(peppers); axis off;

set(gca,’Position’,[0 0 1 1])

Note, when you set the axes Position to [0 0 1 1] so that the displayed image fills
the entire figure, the aspect ratio is not preserved in printing because MATLAB uses
the PaperPosition property to determine printed size and shape. To preserve the
aspect ratio when printing, set the PaperPositionMode to auto as follows:
set(gcf,’PaperPositionMode’,’auto’)

Images can be cropped in MATLAB using sequential matrix indexing. For example:
peppercrop = peppers(1:(m/2),1:(n/2),:);

figure; image(peppercrop)

8.3 Printing and Exporting

Printing and exporting involves outputting graphics objects (usually figures). There
are four basic operations:
• Print

• Print to File

• Export to File

• Export to Clipboard
These can be accessed via either the Command Line or the Graphical User Interfaces.
We consider the former here, and the latter in exercise 12 below. The general printing
and export function is print. On its own, print send the contents of the current
figure to the printer using the printing options specified by printopt (this usually
sends printout to the default printer). The table below summarises further options
available through the addition of input arguments to print.
handle Print the specified object
filename Print to a named PostScript file
-ddriver Print using a specified driver (default is in printopt)
-dformat Export to the clipboard (Windows only). Format must be
either -dmeta or -dbitmap.
-dformat filename Export the figure to file using a specified graphics format.
-options Specify additional printing options.
To demonstrate some options, we start with an annotated peppers image:

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peppers = imread(’peppers.png’,’png’); [m,n,z] = size(peppers);

h = figure(’Units’,’pixels’,’Position’,[100 100 n m],’Color’,’k’)

image(peppers); set(gca,’Position’,[0 0 1 1]); axis off

annotation(’textarrow’,[.2,.3],[.8,.6],’String’,’Chili’,’Color’,’w’);

set(gcf,’InvertHardcopy’,’off’)

and copy to the clipboard (so you can paste it into a word document for example):
print(h,’-dmeta’)

Next, print to PostScript files:

print(h,’-dps’,’PepperFigBW.ps’)

print(h,’-dpsc’,’PepperFig.ps’)

Finally, export to Encapsulated PostScript and PDF formats:

print(h,’-depsc’,’PepperFig.eps’)

print(h,’-dpdf’,’PepperFig.pdf’)

Figure 8.1: Example peppers image.

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Exercise 14. Printing and Exporting Graphics through the GUI

• Print Preview
• Export to File
• Exporting Line Plots

Key Functions imread, image, annotation, set

Step 1
Open the annotated peppers figure by copying and
Task 1
pasting in code from above.
Print Preview
Step 2
Select File|Print Preview... from the Figure window to
open the preview.
Step 3
On the Layout tab, switch to landscape mode, and alter
the manual size and position settings. Try Fill page,
before switching Placement to Auto.
Step 4
On the Lines/Text tab, increase the Font Size and Line
Width until you can clearly see both the annotation
text and arrow.
Step 5
On the Advanced tab, try each of the Renderers and
note any apparent changes.
Step 1
Close the print preview, and select File|Export Setup...
Task 2
Step 2
Export to File
Select Fonts from the Properties menu, and alter the
font to Mistral in size 18. Then click Apply to Figure.
Step 3
Select Lines, change to a fixed line width of 1.5, and
Apply to Figure.
Step 4
Click Export... and export as a tiff with no compres-
sion. Then export as a MATLAB figure, and a jpeg.
Compare file sizes and output image quality.
Step 5
Repeat step 4 after applying different Rendering set-
tings (e.g. dpi), fonts and line widths. Note the change
in file size with increasing dpi settings.
Task 3 Step 1
Exporting Line Plots MATLAB line plot default settings are optimised for
visualisation, rather than printing. Working with the
example line graph from the start of this section (or
another line plot with axes ticks and labels), export
first using the default settings and look at the results.
Step 2
Alter export settings for better appearance of lines and
text in the exported figure.

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9 File Handling
MATLAB is able to import and export data from many different file types, and
different import and export methods are used for each type. In this section, we look
at four of the most common file types. Image data files are covered in section 8.2.

9.1 MAT-Files
MAT-files are the default data storage file type in MATLAB. They are binary files
that can store the variables in your current workspace for later use. MAT-files use
the .mat extension.
To import and export from MAT-files, we can use the load and save functions.
save, by itself, creates a binary MAT-file named matlab.mat in the current folder,
and saves all current variables in the workspace into that file. load, by itself, loads all
the variables stored in matlab.mat into the current workspace, overwriting existing
values. For example:

x = 2

y = 5

save

x = 5000

load

This is not generally the most useful way to use these functions, since each save will
overwrite any previously saved data. Instead we can include a filename argument.
Additional arguments can be used to load or save only particular variables:

save temp x

x = 5000

y = 25

load temp

To inspect the values in a saved file, we can use the command whos -file filename.
This function returns the name, dimensions, size, and class of all variables in the
specified MAT-file. Both whos -file and load will search the MATLAB path as
well as the current folder.

which durer.mat

whos -file durer.mat

load durer.mat

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Function and Command Syntax

In common with many MATLAB built-in functions, load and save can be called
in two different ways. The examples above use the command syntax, where spaces
are used between the function name and arguments. Alternatively we can use
function syntax, where arguments are enclosed in parentheses and separated by
commas. Function syntax is more powerful than command syntax for two main
reasons:
1. We can use string variables as input arguments
2. We can return values from the function into MATLAB variables
For example:
filename = ’durer.mat’
durerdata = load(filename)

Note, durerdata is returned as a struct, which stores heterogeneous data in

named fields. You can reference (access) a field like this:
durerdata.caption

9.1.1 GUI Import and Export

It is also possible to use the GUI to inspect and load MAT-file data. To see the
variables in a MAT-file before loading the file into your workspace, click the file
name in the Current Folder browser. Information about the variables appears in the
Details Panel (bottom left of the GUI). Double clicking loads all the data from the
selected file into the workspace. To select and load MAT-file variables interactively,
use any of the following options:

• Click Import Data on the Desktop Home tab, or run uiimport.

• Drag variables from the Details Panel of the Current Folder browser to the
Workspace browser.

To save data via the GUI, use either of the following options:

• Click Save Workspace on the Desktop Home tab.

• Drag variables from the Workspace browser to the Current Folder browser.

Best Practice
While GUI tools may be easier to use when you are getting started, command
line methods are much more powerful in MATLAB. In particular, the GUI is only
useful for interactive sessions and not for automation.

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9.2 Excel Files

MATLAB features several ways to read from and write to Excel spreadsheets.
The main read and write functions are xlsread and xlswrite. Generic import and
output methods can also be used, but we focus on the specific functions here.

Excel Version Support

Full functionality relies on Excel being installed on the system running MATLAB
and these functions work best in Windows. If you have Excel 2007 or 2010 (in-
cluding the COM server component), then .xlsx (and .xlsb, .xlsm) as well as .xls
files are supported. For Excel 2003, an Office Compatibility Pack is required to
read 2007+ formats. Compatibility can be tested using xlsfinfo, which returns
’Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet’ for readable files and an empty string otherwise.

The xlsread function is flexible, and a useful feature is the ability to separately
read in numeric and text data. For example, open up the hospital.xls example excel
spreadsheet (from the MATLAB stats toolbox demo), in Excel. Next, import the
data into MATLAB using:
[num,txt] = xlsread(’hospital.xls’);

Looking at the Workspace Browser, you will see that the text data have been im-
ported into a MATLAB as a cell array. A cell array is a collection of containers
called cells and each cell can store data of different sizes and types. Here, the cell
array is used to store strings of different lengths.
For spreadsheets with multiple worksheets, xlsread only imports the first worksheet
by default. To import a different worksheet, you can get the names of the sheets
using xlsfinfo, and then read in a named sheet:
[type, sheets] = xlsfinfo(’USTreasury.xls’)

[num,txt] = xlsread(’USTreasury.xls’,sheets {2})

Note the braces around the number 2 here. This is how you reference the contents
of a cell in a cell array.
To interactively select data from excel worksheets, use -1 in place of a sheet name:
[num,txt] = xlsread(’USTreasury.xls’,-1)

To import all worksheets into a struct, use importdata:

treasuries = importdata(’USTreasury.xls’)

The counterpart to xlsread is xlswrite. With xlswrite, you can export data
from the Workspace to any worksheet in an Excel file, and to any location within
that worksheet. By default, xlswrite writes to the first worksheet in a file, starting
at cell A1. If the target file already exists, xlswrite writes data in the existing
format. If not, a new file is created using the format corresponding to the file
extension specified (the default is .xls). If Excel is not installed, xlswrite exports
to a .csv file.

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9.3 Text (ASCII) Files

There are many methods available in MATLAB to import to and export from
ASCII data files.
The load and save functions can work with text rather than binary files, if an
additional argument is added. For example:
x = magic(3);

save(’temp.txt’,’-ascii’)

load -ascii ’temp.txt’

Alternatively, you can launch the generic import wizard GUI by clicking the
Import Data button or running uiimport. The importdata function is largely
equivalent but without a graphical interface.
For ASCII files, uiimport and importdata should automatically detect:
• Row and column headers.

• Field delimiters (characters between data items, such as commas, spaces,

tabs, or semicolons).

• MATLAB comments (lines that begin with a percent sign).

In general load, uiimport and importdata assume that the data in an ASCII file
are:
• Rectangular (with the same number of data fields in each row)

• Numeric
Non-numeric data headers can be handled by calling uiimport or importdata, with
function syntax and a single argument, as we saw for excel files:
mydata = importdata(’headers.txt’)

ASCII files with specific formatting

If the text file formatting is known and/or complex, it can be processed using
specific import and export function as follows:
• Comma-separated value (.csv) files can be read and written using csvread
and csvwrite .
• Delimited numeric data, with a specified delimiter such as tab, can be read
and written using dlmread and dlmwrite.
• Complex text files can be read using textscan (advanced).
• Single lines of text can be read using fscanf, fgetl or fgets, while fprintf
prints a single line of formatted data to a file. These low-level functions can
be very flexible, but require much more work to set up than the high-level
functions.

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9.4 Binary Files

Generic binary files are handled using low-level I/O functions based on functions
in the ANSI Standard C Library. However, the MATLAB versions of fread and
fwrite are vectorized for efficiency (see section 10).
Before reading or writing to a file using the low-level I/O functions, it must first be
opened using fopen to obtain a file identifier (fopen is also required for low-level
I/O to text files). The first input argument to fopen is a file name string, while the
second is a permission string describing the type of access required (e.g. read, write,
append, or update). After completing low-level file I/O, a file should be closed using
fclose (Tip: learn to pair fopen and fclose calls). Here is a simple example of a
binary file write:
x = [1:3;4:6]

fid = fopen(’temp.bin’,’w’);

fwrite(fid, x);

fclose(fid);

followed by a binary file read:

fid = fopen(’temp.bin’);

y = fread(fid)

fclose(fid);

By default, fwrite writes the values from a matrix in column order as 8-bit unsigned
integers (uint8). Also by default, fread reads a file 1 byte at a time, interpreting
each byte as a uint8. fread creates a column vector output, with one element for
each byte in the file. The values in the output vector are of type double (the default
MATLAB numerical data type).
To read only a specified number of values, or import into two dimensional matrix,
a size argument to fread can be added as follows:
fid = fopen(’temp.bin’);

y = fread(fid, 4)

frewind(fid);

y = fread(fid, [2,2])

frewind(fid);

y = fread(fid, [2,inf])

fclose(fid);

To write and read with a different precision, add a precision string argument:

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xpi = pi*x

fid = fopen(’xpi.bin’,’w+’);

fwrite(fid, xpi, ’double’);

frewind(fid);

y = fread(fid, [2,inf], ’double’)

fclose(fid);

Exercise 15. Magic Files

• MAT Files
• Excel Files
• Binary Files

Key Functions save, load, xlswrite, xlsread, fopen, fclose,

fwrite, fread, frewind
Step 1
Task 1
Start MATLAB and change the current folder to
MAT Files
H:\matlab\tutorial4 (see section 2.4).
Step 2
Create two magic squares of size five and ten and save
them to two separate MAT files named magic5.mat and
magic10.mat, respectively. See section 9.1
. Step 3
clear the original magic square variables and then
reload them from the MAT files using load.
Step 4
Confirm that the reloaded variables are the expected
magic squares.
Step 1
Using xlswrite in the following form:
Task 2
xlswrite(filename,A,sheet,range) (where A
Excel Files
is the matrix to be written and the other variables
are strings; read the doc examples), write the small
magic square to an excel spreadsheet called magic.xls,
starting at cell C2, and naming the sheet magic5.
Step 2
Write the large magic square to a second worksheet in
the same file called magic10, starting from cell B3.
Step 3
Open the spreadsheet in Excel (outside MATLAB) to
confirm it has written correctly.
Step 4
Use xlsfinfo to check the format of the excel file, and
the names of the worksheets.

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Step 5
Clear the magic square variables from the workspace
and read them back in from the Excel spreadsheet using
xlsread in interactive mode (set sheet to -1) to read
the magic squares back into MATLAB. Select the data
before clicking OK in the pop-up box.
Step 1
Using fopen, open a binary file called magic.bin for
Task 3 reading and writing, discarding existing contents. Use
Binary Files help to choose an appropriate permission string for
fopen.
Step 2
Using fwrite, write the small magic square to the start
of the binary file.
Step 3
Clear the small magic square variable and use frewind,
and fread to rewind the file and then read the small
magic square back in from the open binary file. You
will need to give a size argument to fread. See the
examples in section 9.4 for guidance.
Step 4
Close the binary file using fclose and reopen it in ap-
pend, read-write mode (a+). Write the large magic
square to the end of the file.
Step 5
Rewind the file, and read in both magic squares from
the binary file.
Step 6
Finally, close the binary file.

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MATLAB: An Introduction

Exercise 16. Demographic statistics of UK and European Union countries

• Open Excel and MAT Files

• Plotting of the data
• UK population increase rate
• Age structure of UK population

Key Functions xlsread, load, plot, XTickLabel, for, sort, sum, bar,
disp
Step 1
Task 1
Open the Excel file named ’UK demographics.xls’ in
Open Excel and MAT Files
the H:\Matlab\tutorial4 directory outside Matlab and
study the different sheets and fields.
Step 2
Open the Excel file named ’UK demographics.xls’
through MATLAB and assign the different sheets in
different variables, as it has been demonstrated in this
chapter.
Step 3
Open the MAT file named ’EuropeanUnionDemograph-
ics.mat’ in the H:\Matlab\tutorial4 directory through
MATLAB. This file contains three columns: the first
one has the names of the countries in the EU, the sec-
ond has the population of each country, and the third
has the area (in km2 ) of each country.
Task 2 Step 1
Plot of the data Plot the UK population over time. The x axis of the
plot should have the corresponding years.
Step 2
Plot the UK population in 2011 with respect to the age
group. Then, change the x axis labels to correspond to
the different age groups. In order to do this, consider
using the plot property ’XTickLabel’.
Step 1
Task 3
Create a new script and name it ’UKpopulationIn-
UK population Increase rate
creaseRate.m’.
Step 2
Using the UK demographics over time data, calculate
the rate of population change over year. For example
for year 2010, the rate is (population in 2010 - pop-
ulation in 2009)/(population in 2009). Save this data
along with the corresponding year in a matrix called
’PopulationChangeRate’.
Step 3
Sort the ’PopulationChangeRate’ matrix and display
the year with the highest population change rate. Con-
sider using either a loop to examine all the data and
find the highest value, or the MATLAB function ’sort’.

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Task 4 Step 1
Age structure of UK Create a new script and name it ’UKpopulation-
population AgeStructure.m’.
Step 2
The UK population in 2011 for five year bands is given.
Categorize the UK population according to larger age
groups, i.e. 0-14, 15-64, 65+, and calculate each groups
population. Then, calculate the total population for
that year and the percentage for each age group.
Step 3
Plot using bar plots the population of each group. In
the axis display the age range for each group.
Step 1
Task 5
Create a new script and name it ’EUcountriesPopula-
Population density of EU
tionDensity.m’.
countries
Step 2
Using the EU demographical data, calculate the popu-
lation density of each country.
Step 3
Sort the EU countries according to population density
in descending order.
Step 4
Display a message with the countries that have the
highest and lowest population density.

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MATLAB: An Introduction

10 Performance
MATLAB is an interpreted computing system. This means that the code is not
generally compiled into a standalone program, like most applications you will find
on a desktop PC. Instead, the code is interpreted on the fly at run-time. The advan-
tages of an interpreted system include rapid development time and the MATLAB
GUI facilities. The disadvantage is that interpreted code tends to run slower than
compiled code, particularly when the code is not optimised. In this section, we look
at ways to monitor and improve the performance of a MATLAB program.

10.1 Measuring Performance

10.1.1 Stopwatch timing

A quick way to check the speed of a particular section of code is to use the stopwatch
timer functions, tic and toc. Calling tic initialises the stopwatch timer, and a
subsequent call to toc returns the time elapsed since the last call to tic. Wrapping
any block of code in a tic toc pair should reveal how long that code takes to run.
For small programs, it may be more informative to calculate average run time.
tic
for i=1:1000
r=rand(500)*i;
end
t1=toc/1000

10.1.2 The Profiler

The profiler utility is a good way to work out where bottlenecks are in a program,
and can be particularly useful on large programs with many components. The
profiler generates a report that shows you a breakdown of which components of a
program take up most time during execution. For each MATLAB function in a
running program, profile records information about execution time, number of calls,
parent functions, child functions, code line hit count, and code line execution time.
The profiler is controlled using the profile function. Refer to the help files for an
explanation of the syntax and operation. To focus on function performance, GUI
output from the program should be minimised. Try this example to see why:
profile on
for i = 1:1000
figure(1); close all
r = rand(100);
end
profile viewer

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 MATLAB: An Introduction

Figure 10.1: Example profiler output.

Exercise 17. Measuring Performance

• Stopwatch timing
• Profiling

Key Functions tic, toc, profile

Step 1
Task 1 Open the solution to exercise 5 Fibonacci sequence and
Stopwatch timing save a copy as performance.m for this exercise.
Step 2
Use the stopwatch timer functions (tic and toc) outside
the loop in performance.m to measure the time it takes
to calculate the required numbers of the Fibonacci se-
quence (in this case 20).
Step 3
Create an outer loop that in every iteration will calcu-
late a different number of Fibonacci numbers, starting
from 10 until 100 with a step of 5.
Step 4
Store the time results from toc in a results vector (using
a new variable as a counter of the iterations in order to
index the vector). Plot these time results against the
number of Fibonacci numbers calculated in each case.
Task 2 Step 1
Profiling Use the profiler (doc profile) to analyse the performance
of the program and view the results.

10.2 Improving Performance

Quick Tips
1. load and save are faster than low-level file I/O functions (see section 9).
2. Use logical indexing to quickly access non-contiguous matrix elements.
3. Don’t change a variable’s data type. When converting, create a new variable.
x = 10
x = num2str(x)
vs.
xs = num2str(x)
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MATLAB: An Introduction

10.2.1 Preallocation

In section 3, we explored how matrices can be dynamically increased in size in

MATLAB via concatenation, or out-of-bounds assignment. This can be useful when
used in moderation, but repeated resizing carries a memory management cost and
this can slow a program down. If it is possible to work out the maximum size a
matrix will grow to during program execution in advance, then it is more efficient to
allocate the required amount of space in advance. This is especially relevant in for
loops, where the size of a variable is increased by a fixed amount at each repeat of
the loop. Since the number of repeats in a for is known, it is better to pre-allocate
the variable. Note the performance difference between these examples:
clear; tic

x = [];

for i = 1:10000

x = [x,rand(10,1)];

end

toc

clear; tic

x = [];

for i = 1:10000

x(:,i) = rand(10,1);

end

toc

clear; tic

x = zeros(10,10000);

for i = 1:1000

x(:,i) = rand(10,1);

end

toc

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 MATLAB: An Introduction

10.2.2 Vectorization

In section 5, we mentioned that nested loops can be slow in MATLAB. However,

MATLAB performs vector and matrix operations very efficiently using built-in (com-
piled) code and this leads us to vectorization. Vectorization means converting loops
into equivalent vector or matrix operations, which can result in significant speed-ups
that tend to increase with increasing code complexity. Here is a simple example:
clear; tic

i = 0;

for t = 0:.01:10

i = i + 1;

for j = 1:100

y1(j,i) = sin(t)*j;

end

end

toc

tic

t = 0:.01:10;

j2 = repmat((1:100)’,1,length(t));

y2 = repmat(sin(t),100,1).*j2;

toc

numericalerror = max(max(y1-y2))

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MATLAB: An Introduction

Exercise 18. Image Message Decoding

• A Hidden Message
• Vectorized Decoding
• Vectorized Plot
• Vectorized Image Cleanup

Key Functions find, char, if, for, median

Task 1 Step 1
A Hidden Message With the MATLAB current directory set to
H:\matlab\tutorial4, open image decoding stub.m,
and save as image decoding.m.
Step 2
This script extracts a hidden message hidden in the
pixel values of a modified version of the peppers image.
Step 3
The message has been encoded in the image by convert-
ing characters into integer red pixel values using ASCII
codes. e.g. uint8(’=’) gives a value of 61. It is decoded
by converting integer values to character values using
char. Run the program now to see what the message is
and see the program comments for further information.
Step 4
To Begin coding, uncomment the toc, profile viewer and
return statements above the loops.
Step 1
The two outer for loops loop over rows and columns of
Task 2 the image to search for message coding pixels.
Vectorized Decoding Step 2
In MATLAB, this matrix search can be performed with-
out loops or indices, using the red and blue matrices.
Step 3
Two decoding tests are performed inside the loops us-
ing if statements. The first tests for a 2-to-1 red to
blue pixel ratio. A line commented out in the Task
2 code section vectorizes this test to produce a logi-
cal matrix the same size as the image, with true values
only for possible message pixels. A second line here
converts this matrix into a short linear index vector us-
ing find. Uncomment both lines and run the program.
The length of the vector returned by find should be 66.
Step 4
A second test in the original code checks for coded
values greater than 31, to ignore irrelevant characters.
Both tests can be combined in a single line using a log-
ical and operator. After modifying, the length of the
vector returned by find should be 62.

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 MATLAB: An Introduction

Step 5
Finally, the message decoding can be achieved using
either logical or linear indexing into the green and red
matrices (logical indexing requires less code). Add the
message to the subplot title by copying in code.
Task 3 Step 1
Vectorized Plot Marking pixels with squares can be approximately vec-
torized using a single plot statement, with row-column
indices from find, and square markers. You can see
the approximation using zoom.
Step 1
The supplied image cleanup code uses two for loops to
Task 4
perform median filtering in each channel over a neigh-
Vectorized Image Cleanup
bourhood around the message pixels.
Step 2
To perform the cleanup using no loops, you should cre-
ate an n x 9 matrix for each colour channel storing the
9 pixel values in the neighbourhood of each message
pixel. A single n x 9 x 3 array can also be used. To do
this, you should use indexing into the red, green, blue
matrices relative to the message pixel index locations
(given by find in Task 2). For example, the pixel just
to the left of reference pixel at location x is at x - m1
and the pixel above the reference is at x - 1.
Step 3
Start by creating a vector of 9 shift values (e.g. -m1 and
-1 for the examples above), then use repmat to extend
this to n x 9 and add the shift matrix to the message
coding pixel locations (repmat again) to calculate the
neighbourhood locations. The neighbourhood locations
can then be used as indices into the red, green, blue
matrices to extract the neighbourhood pixel values.
Step 4
Finally, use median in the second dimension to per-
form the cleanup filtering. Copy in the image display
code to inspect the results (using zoom to confirm pixel
cleanup).

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MATLAB: An Introduction

11 What Next?
We hope you have found this book useful. If you attended a taught session you will
get an email with a link to a web page to give us anonymous feedback. We always
value your feedback and use it to improve our sessions.
You may like to consider the following options to follow on from these sessions.

11.1 Computer
We encourage everyone to work at their own pace. This may mean that you don’t
manage to finish all of the exercises presented in this booklet. If you would like to
complete the exercises while someone is on hand to help you, come along to one of
the Computer8 sessions that run during term time. More details are available at:
www.it.ox.ac.uk/courses/

11.2 IT Services Help Centre

The IT Services Help Centre is open from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm, Monday to Friday.
You can use the facilities to work through the exercises in this booklet, or use any
of the applications that are available.
The Help Centre is also a good place to get advice about any aspect of using com-
puter software or hardware. You can contact the Help Centre on (2)73200 or by
email: [email protected]

11.3 Downloadable Course Materials and More - The ITLP Portfolio

These course materials are available through the ITLP Portfolio, at:
http://portfolio.it.ox.ac.uk/
Each course pack includes the course handbook in pdf form and a zip folder of the
exercise files that you need to complete the exercises.
The ITLP Portfolio helps you find articles, videos, resources and weblinks for further
IT study. For some resources, you will be asked for your Oxford (SSO) username
and password.

11.4 Books
There are many MATLAB textbooks available, from general introductory texts to
application-specific guides. For a general introduction, try Getting Started with
MATLAB: A Quick Introduction for Scientists and Engineers (Rudra Pratap, 2010).
For a quick reference, try MATLAB Primer, 8th Edition (Timothy A Davis, 2010).

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Appendix
Chapter 2: The MATLAB Environment

The MATLAB Environment

Command Window MATLAB Editor

Create variables Create /View /Edit MATLAB program files (i.e. a

Enter commands (commands immediately list of commands)
processed by pressing ENTER) Files saved as M-Files
Run programs INTERACTIVELY Two types of programs: Scripts & Functions
Useful commands: Code Highlighting and debugging features
clc : to clear the Command Window Program runs by pressing RUN and all the
help/doc: followed by the name of a function commands run one after the other from the
provide information regarding this function first until the last.
Chapter 3: Matrices

MATRIX CREATION
Constructor operator [ ]
Built-in functions: ones/zeros/rand/randn
MATRIX CONCATENATION
MATRIX SORTING Concatenation operator [ ]
Numeric Sequences Generation: colon operator
sort/ sortrows (first:last) Built-in functions:
cat/horzcat/vertcat/repmat

MATRIX INDEXING MATRIX INFORMATION

Row-column indexing: A(row,column) Length of each dimension: size
Linear indexing: A(ind) MATRICES Length of longest dimension: length
Convert between index styles: Total number of elements: numel
sub2ind/ind2sub
Test data type of matrix:
Access sequential elements: colon isa/isfloat/isinteger/isnumeric/islogical
operator
Test structure of a matrix:
isvector/isscalar/isempty
MATRIX RESIZING
Matrix expasion via:
MATRIX RESHAPING & SHIFTING
1) concatenation
flipud/fliplr/flipdim/rot90/transpose
2) writing to a location outside the current bounds
(automatic padding with zeros where a row/column /reshape/circshift
not specified)
Chapter 4: Data types

NUMERIC
Double/Single precision floating point numbers
Signed/Unsigned
Functions for convertion between datatypes:
int8/int16/uint8/uint16/single/double

MAIN
MATRIX
DATA TYPES
Logical Characters & Strings
String: a vector of characters surrounded by
Logical true or false represented as 1 and 0.
single quotes
Used for matrix indexing, conditional
Convertion between characters and numbers:
statements
num2str/str2num/str2double
Chapter 5: Operators

• + and - : Matrix addition and subtraction

• .* : Element-by-element product of two matrices
• .^ : Array power (A.^B is matrix with elements A(i,j) to the B(i,j) power)
Arithmetic •
•
./ : Array right division (A./B is the matrix with elements A(i,j)/B(i,j))
.\ : Array left division (same as above)
Operators • *: Matrix multiplication
• ^ : Matrix power
• / : Matrix right division
• \ : Matrix left division

• < : Less than

• <= : Less than or equal to
Relational • > : Greater than

Operators •
•
>= : Greater than or equal to
== : Equal to
• ~= : Not equal to

• & : Logical AND (A&B returns true for every location that it is true in both arrays)
• | : Logical OR (similar as above)
Logical • ~ : Logical NOT (Compliments each element of the input array)
Operators • && : Short-circuit AND (Expressions on the left and right side. Outcome of the
operator depends on the outcome of each expression)
• || : Short-circuit OR (similar as above)
Chapter 5: Control Statements

Conditionals (PART A) LOOPS (PART A)

If (logical expression)
for index = start:increment:end
…………………………..
elseif (logical expression) …………………………………………
………………………….. …………………………………………
. …………………………………………
. end
else (index: the name of a variable that acts as a counter of the loops
………………………….. start: starting point of iterations
end: ending point of iterations
End start:increment:end -> determines the total number of iterations)

Conditionals (PART B) LOOPS (PART B)

switch (expression) while expression

…………………………………………
case (value) …………………………………………
……………….
case (value)
…………………………………………
………………. end
(one or more lines of the code inside the while loop must change the value of the
case (value) test expression in order to avoid infinite iterations of execution of this block code)
……………….
.
.
otherwise
……………….
End
Chapter 6: Programming Fundamentals
There are two types of MATLAB program files (M-files):

Scripts List of commands stored in an M-file Accept input arguments

Functions
Return output arguments
Different scripts share same
workspace Name of function=Name of M-file
All variables in a script remain in Each function has its own workspace
the workspace after the script
finishes Only the outputs are returned to the
workspace from where the function was called
Components:
• Housekeeping code Components
(clear/close/clc/home) • Function Declaration function
• Script body (all the commands required [out1, out2,..]=myfun(in1, in2,...)
to achieve the goal of the specific • Comments (lines starting with %)
script) • Function Body (all the commands required to
• Comments (lines starting with %) achieve the goal of the specific script)

Running Running
• From the Command Window by • From the Command Window by providing
entering the script name and pressing the input arguments and calling then the
ENTER function as: [out1,...]=myfun(in1,in2,..)
• From the Editor by pressing RUN or F5 • From a script or another function in which
the input arguments are declared and then
the function is called as before
Chapter 9: File Handling

MAT-Files Excel Files

Default data storage file type Read/ Write functions: xlsread/ xlswrite/
Import/Export functions: load/ save importdata
GUI import and export supported Information about a spreadsheet:
Inspect elements in a file: whos -file [type,sheets]=xlsinfo('Filename')
filename Ability to import a specific spreadsheet
(using an extra argument in xlsread)
MATLAB file Ability to interactively select data from a
spreadsheet

types and
handling

Binary Files Text (ASCII) Files

Handled using low-level I/O functions Import/ Export functions: load/ save with the additional argument -
ascii, or importdata
Import/ Export functions: fread/ fwrite
Import GUI: Import Data button or command uiimport
Before reading/writing file opening is required: fopen
For specific formatting: csvread/csvwrite (comma-separated value
After reading/writing file closing is required: fclose files)
Reading of a specific number of values or reading/writing dlmread /dlmwrite (delimited numeric data)
with different precision is supported
textscan (complex text files) etc
Debugging

Always read the

Types of errors
error messages

Typographical Syntax
Incorrect syntax of calling a
Mispelling of a variable/command Algorithmic function or using an operator
Error message: Probably Error in the process followed by Error message: Yes
our code
Error message: Probably not

Put a breakpoint (various

Debugging: Go ways: Step-by-step execute the
commands one after the
through a part of the •Using MATLAB GUI button other.
When code execution When error is
code, step-by-step to called Breakpoints
reaches a breakpoint, Display results on the identified, remove the
check the output of •Using a try/ catch block of
code control is returned to command window, check breakpoints and run
each command and
•Using the buoilt-in you. variables in the the program as before.
identify where and
commands (e.g. dbstop, workspace and evaluate
what the error is. them.
dbclear, etc) from the
command window