MATLAB CHEAT SHEET

Throughout this document x and y will be either row or column vectors and A will always be a matrix.

Basics Operations on Matrices and Vectors

clc Clear command window 3 * x Multiply every element of x by 3
clear Clear all variables x + 2 Add 2 to every element of x
clf Clear all plots x + y Element-wise addition of two vectors x and y
close all Close all plots A * y Product of a matrix and vector
doc function Open help page for function A * B Product of two matrices
% This is a comment Comments A .* B Element-wise product of two matrices
ctrl-c Abort the current operation A ^ 3 Square matrix A to the third power
format short Display 4 decimal places A .^ 3 Every element of A to the third power
format long Display 15 decimal places cos(A) Compute the cosine of every element of A
disp('text') Print text abs(A) Compute the absolute values of every element of A
A' Transpose of A
inv(A) Compute the inverse of A
Defining and Changing Variables det(A) Compute the determinant of A
a = 3 Define variable a to be 3 eig(A) Compute the eigenvalues of A
x = [1, 2, 3] Set x to be the row vector [1, 2, 3] size(A) Get the size of A
x = [1; 2; 3] Set x to be the column vector [1, 2, 3]T
A = [1, 2, 3, 4; Set A to be a 3 × 4 matrix
Entries of Matrices and Vectors
x(2:12) The 2nd to the 12th elements of x
5, 6, 7, 8;
x(2:end) The 2nd to the last elements of x
9, 10, 11, 12]
x(1:3:end) Every third element of x from the first to last
x(2) = 7 Change x from [1, 2, 3] to [1, 7, 3]
A(5,:) Get the 5th row of A
A(2,1) = 0 Change A2,1 from 5 to 0
A(:,5) Get the 5th column of A
A(5, 1:3) Get the first to third elements in the 5th row

Basic Arithmetic and Functions Plotting

3*4, 7+4, 2-6, 8/3 multiply, add, subtract and divide
plot(x,y) Plot y versus x (must be the same
3^7 Compute 37 length)
√
sqrt(5) Compute 5 loglog(x,y) Plot y versus x on a log-log scale
log(3) Compute ln(3) (both axes have a logarithmic scale)
log10(100) Compute log10 (100) semilogx(x, y) Plot y versus x with x on a log scale
abs(-5) Compute | − 5| semilogy(x, y) Plot y versus x with y on a log scale
sin(5*pi/3) Compute sin(5π/3) axis equal Force the x and y axes to be scaled
equally
floor(3.8) Compute ⌊3.8⌋
title('A Title') Add a title to the plot
xlabel('x label') Add a label to the x axis
ylabel('y label') Add a label to the y axis
Constructing Matrices and Vectors
legend('foo', 'bar') Label 2 curves for the plot
zeros(12, 5) Make a 12 × 5 matrix of zeros
grid Add a grid to the plot
ones(12, 5) Make a 12 × 5 matrix of ones
hold on Multiple plots on single figure
eye(5) Make a 5 × 5 identity matrix
figure Start a new plot
eye(12, 5) Make a 12 × 5 identity matrix
linspace(1.4, 6.3, 1004) Make a vector with 1004 ele- Constants
ments evenly spaced between pi π = 3.141592653589793
1.4 and 6.3
NaN Not a number (i.e. 0/0)
logspace(1.4, 6.3, 1004) Make a vector with 1004 ele-
ments where the log of the Inf Infinity
spacing is evenly increasing be- realmax Largest positive floating-point number 1.7977 · 10308
tween 1.4 and 6.3 realmin Smallest positive floating-point number 2.2251 ·
7:15 Row vector of 7, 8, . . . , 14, 15 10−308

Steven E. Thornton steventhornton.ca Updated: December 16, 2016

 MATLAB CHEAT SHEET

For loops Function Handles

for k = 1:5 f = @(x) sin(x.^2)./(5*x);
disp(k);
end f(pi/2)
0.0795
f([-pi/2, 0, pi/2])
-0.0795 NaN 0.0795
While loops

k = 0; Plotting
while k < 7
k = k + 1;
end x = linspace(-3*pi, 3*pi, 1000);
y1 = sin(x);
y2 = cos(x);

Logicals plot(x, y1, 'k-'); % Plot sin(x) as a black line

hold on % Now we can add another curve
plot(x, y2, 'r-'); % Plot cos(x) as a red line
a = 10; % Assign a the value of 10
a == 5 % Test if a is equal to 5 % Set the axis limits
false axis([-3*pi, 3*pi, -1.5, 1.5])
a == 10 % Test if a is equal to 10
true % Add axis labels
a >= 5 % Test if a is greater than or equal to 5 xlabel('x');
true ylabel('y');
a < 11 % Test if a is less than 11
true % Add a title
a ~= 4 % Test if a is not equal to 4 title('A plot of cos(x) and sin(x)');
true
a > 1 && a ~= 10 % Test if a is greater than 1 AND % Add a legend
false % not equal to 10 legend('sin(x)', 'cos(x)');
a > 1 || a ~= 10 % Test if a is greater than 1 OR
true % not equal to 10

A plot of cos(x) and sin(x)

1.5
Conditional Statements sin(x)
cos(x)
1
if a > 10
disp('Greater than 10');
elseif a == 5
0.5
disp('a is 5');
else
disp('Neither condition met');
0
y

end

-0.5
Functions
-1
function output = addNumbers(x, y)
output = x + y;
end
-1.5
-5 0 5
addNumbers(10, -5)
5 x

Steven E. Thornton steventhornton.ca Updated: December 16, 2016