Introduction to MATLAB Northeastern University: College of Computer and Information Science Co-op Preparation University (CPU) 10/22/2003

Overview for 10/22/2003 Review of topics covered in last session (10/20/2003) Review of the MATLAB environment (covered in last session) Declaring and manipulating variables Useful functions

Review of 10/20/2003 Contact Information Course Overview MATLAB Overview

Contact Information “Office Hours”: Wednesday after class Some information available: –

Course Overview Course Structure

Week 1: Overview of MATLAB –History of MATLAB –Overview of MATLAB environment –Discussion of MATLAB in co-op Week 2: Basic MATLAB –Simple MATLAB functionality Syntax, Commands –Exercises involving basic MATLAB functionality

Course Structure, con’t: 2 Week 3: Advanced MATLAB Functionality –Beyond MATLAB as a calculator –The MATLAB programming language –Project showcasing MATLABs advanced functionality

Meeting Times and Locations Week 1 –Class 1 Monday, Oct. 20, p.m., 257 CN –Class 2 Wednesday, Oct. 22, p.m., 257 CN –Class 3 Thursday, Oct. 23, p.m., 247 CN

Meeting Times and Locations, con’t: 2 Week 2 –Class 1 Monday, Oct. 27, p.m., 257 CN –Class 2 Wednesday, Oct. 29, p.m., 257 CN –Class 3 Thursday, Oct. 30, p.m., 247 CN

Meeting Times and Locations, con’t: 3 Week 3 –Class 1 Monday, Nov. 3, p.m., 257 CN –Class 2 Wednesday, Nov. 5, p.m., 257 CN –Class 3 Thursday, Nov. 6, p.m., 247 CN

Coursework Collection of exercises: –Will occur during the second week –Will involve MATLABs basic functionality Final project: –Will occur during the final two sessions –Will cover MATLABs basic and advanced functionality

History of MATLAB Ancestral software to MATLAB –Fortran subroutines for solving linear (LINPACK) and eigenvalue (EISPACK) problems –Developed primarily by Cleve Moler in the 1970’s

History of MATLAB, con’t: 2 Later, when teaching courses in mathematics, Moler wanted his students to be able to use LINPACK and EISPACK without requiring knowledge of Fortran MATLAB developed as an interactive system to access LINPACK and EISPACK

History of MATLAB, con’t: 3 MATLAB gained popularity primarily through word of mouth because it was not officially distributed In the 1980’s, MATLAB was rewritten in C with more functionality (such as plotting routines)

History of MATLAB, con’t: 4 The Mathworks, Inc. was created in 1984 The Mathworks is now responsible for development, sale, and support for MATLAB The Mathworks is located in Natick, MA The Mathworks is an employer that hires co-ops through our co-op program

MATLAB GUI Launch Pad / Toolbox Workspace Current Directory Command History Command Window

Launch Pad / Toolbox Will not be covered Launch Pad allows you to start help/demos Toolbox is for use with specialized packages (Signal Processing)

Workspace Allows access to data Area of memory managed through the Command Window Shows Name, Size (in elements), Number of Bytes and Type of Variable

Current Directory MATLAB, like Windows or UNIX, has a current directory MATLAB functions can be called from any directory Your programs (to be discussed later) are only available if the current directory is the one that they exist in

Command History Allows access to the commands used during this session, and possibly previous sessions Clicking and dragging to the Command window allows you to re-execute previous commands

Command Window Probably the most important part of the GUI Allows you to input the commands that will create variables, modify variables and even (later) execute scripts and functions you program yourself.

Simple Commands who whos save clear load

who who lists the variables currently in the workspace. As we learn more about the data structures available in MATLAB, we will see more uses of “who”

whos whos is similar to who, but also gives size and storage information s = whos(...) returns a structure with these fields name variable name size variable size bytes number of bytes allocated for the array class class of variable and assigns it to the variable s. (We will discuss structures more).

Save save – saves workspace variables on disk save filename stores all workspace variables in the current directory in filename.mat save filename var1 var2... saves only the specified workspace variables in filename.mat. Use the * wildcard to save only those variables that match the specified pattern.

Clear clear removes items from workspace, freeing up system memory Examples of syntax: –clear –clear name –clear name1 name2 name3...

clc Not quite clear clc clears only the command window, and has no effect on variables in the workspace.

Load load - loads workspace variables from disk Examples of Syntax: –load –load filename –load filename X Y Z

Declaring a variable in MATLAB Not necessary to specify a type. (Such as int or float) Several kinds of variables: –Vector –Matrix –Structure –Cell array

Declaring a variable, con’t: 2 For an integer or floating point number: simply set a variable name equal to some character Ex. A = 5; Or A = 5

Sidenote 1 The presence or lack of a semi-colon after a MATLAB command does not generate an error of any kind The presence of a semi-colon tells MATLAB to suppress the screen output of the command

Sidenote 1, con’t: 2 The lack of a semi-colon will make MATLAB output the result of the command you entered One of these options is not necessarily better than the other

Declaring a variable, con’t: 3 You may now use the simple integer or float that you used like a normal number (though internally it is treated like a 1 by 1 matrix) Possible operations: –+, -, / –Many functions (round(), ceil(), floor())

Declaring a variable, con’t: 4 You may also make a vector rather simply The syntax is to set a variable name equal to some numbers, which are surrounded by brackets and separated by either spaces or commas Ex. A = [ ]; Or A = [1,2,3,4,5];

Declaring a variable, con’t: 5 You may also declare a variable in a general fashion much more quickly Ex. A = 1:1:10 The first 1 would indicate the number to begin counting at The second 1 would be the increase each time And the count would end at 10

Declaring a variable, con’t: 6 Matrices are the primary variable type for MATLAB Matrices are declared similar to the declaration of a vector Begin with a variable name, and set it equal to a set of numbers, surrounded by brackets. Each number should be seperated by a comma or semi-colon

Declaring a variable, con’t: 7 The semi-colons in a matrix declaration indicate where the row would end Ex. A = [ 1,2;3,4] would create a matrix that looks like [ ]

Declaring a variable, con’t: 7 Matrices may be used as normal variables now. Multiplying is already defined for matrices, and additional code does not need to be written.

Declaring a variable, con’t: 8 The final type of variable we will discuss today will be a struct. The command struct is used to create a structure Syntax: –s = struct('field1',{},'field2',{},...) –s = struct('field1',values1,'field2',values2,...)

Declaring a variable, con’t 9 A simple declaration of a structure is as follows: Student.name = “Joe”; Student.age = 23; Student.major = “Computer Science”;

Declaring a variable, con’t: 10 Arrays of structures are possible. Taking the previous example, if one were to write: Student(2).name = “Bill” …etc Then the array would be created for you.

Declaring a variable, con’t: 11 Structures can group information, but methods are not written for them.

End Another satisfied MATLAB user!