Matlab Quick reference¶

Page last updated on: 2019-10-14

General Commands¶

Tip

Some commands have links to syntax details and examples.

Command Description
clc Clear Command Window
clear Remove items from workspace, freeing up system memory
close all Close all plots
doc function Display documentation page in Help browser
help Help for functions in Command Window
ver Version information for MathWorks products
% some comment text Comment text
CTRL+C Abort the current operation
format short Display 4 decimal places
format long Display 15 decimal places
disp('some text') Print some text

Defining Variables¶

Command Description
a = 3 Define variable a to be 3
x = [1, 2, 3] Set x to be the row vector [1, 2, 3]
x = [1; 2; 3] Set x to be the column vector [1, 2, 3]T
A = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6;
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]
Set A to be a 2 × 6 matrix
x(2) = 7 Change x from [1, 2, 3] to [1, 7, 3]
A(2,1) = 0 Change A2,1 from 5 to 0

Basic Arithmetic¶

Command Description
3*4, 7+4, 2-6, 8/3 multiply, add, subtract and divide
3^7 Compute $3^7$
sqrt(5) Compute $\sqrt{5}$
log(3) Compute natural logarithm $ln(3)$
log10(100) Compute common logarithm (base 10) $log(10)$
abs(-5) Compute |-5|
sin(5*pi/3) Compute $sin(5\pi/3)$

Round numbers¶

Command Description
floor(-1.5) -2; Round toward negative infinity
ceil(-1.5) -1; Round toward positive infinity
fix(-1.5) -1; Round toward zero
round(-1.5) -2; Round to nearest decimal or integer

Matrices and Vectors¶

Command Description
zeros(12, 5) Make a 12 × 5 matrix of zeros
ones(12, 5) Make a 12 × 5 matrix of ones
eye(5) Make a 5 × 5 identity matrix
eye(12, 5) Make a 12 × 5 identity matrix
linspace(1.4, 6.3, 1004) Make a vector with 1004 elements evenly spaced between 1.4 and 6.3
logspace(1.4, 6.3, 1004) Make a vector with 1004 elements where the log of the spacing is
evenly increasing between 1.4 and 6.3
7:15 Row vector of 7, 8, . . . , 14, 15

Operations on Matrices and Vectors¶

Command Description
3 * x Multiply every element of x by 3
x + 2 Add 2 to every element of x
x + y Element-wise addition of two vectors x and y
A * y Product of a matrix and vector
A * B Product of two matrices
A .* B Element-wise product of two matrices
A ^ 3 Square matrix A to the third power
A .^ 3 Every element of A to the third power
cos(A) Compute the cosine of every element of A
abs(A) Compute the absolute values of every element of A
A' Transpose of A
inv(A) Compute the inverse of A
det(A) Compute the determinant of A
eig(A) Compute the eigenvalues of A
size(A) Get the size of A

Slicing Matrices and vectors¶

Command Description
x(2:12) The 2nd to the 12th elements of x
x(2:end) The 2nd to the last elements of x
x(1:3:end) Every third element of x from the first to last
A(5,:) Get the 5th row of A
A(:,5) Get the 5th column of A
A(5, 1:3) Get the first to third elements in the 5th row

Constants¶

Command Description
pi $\pi$ = 3.141592653589793
NaN Not a number (i.e. 0/0)
Inf Infinity
realmax Largest positive floating-point number $1.7977x10^{308}$
realmin Smallest positive floating-point number $2.2251x10^{−308}$

Loops¶

For loop:

for k = 1:5
disp(k);
end


While loop:

k = 0;
while k < 7
k = k + 1;
end


Logicals¶

a = 10
a == 5 % Test if a is equal to 5
false
a == 10 % Test if a is equal to 10
true
a >= 5 % Test if a is greater than or equal to 5
true
a < 11 % Test if a is less than 11
true
a ~= 4 % Test if a is not equal to 4
true
a > 1 && a ~= 10 % Test if a is greater than 1 AND not equal to 10
false
a > 1 || a ~= 10 % Test if a is greater than 1 OR not equal to 10
true


Conditional Statements¶

if a > 10
disp('Greater than 10');
elseif a == 5
disp('a is 5');
else
disp('Neither condition met');
end


Functions¶

function output = addNumbers(x, y)
output = x + y;
end

5


Plotting¶

Command Description
plot(x,y) Plot y versus x (must be the same length)
loglog(x,y) Plot y versus x on a log-log scale (both axes have a logarithmic scale)
semilogx(x, y) Plot y versus x with x on a log scale
semilogy(x, y) Plot y versus x with y on a log scale
axis equal Force the x and y axes to be scaled equally
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
legend('foo', 'bar') Label 2 curves for the plot
grid Add a grid to the plot
hold on Multiple plots on single figure
figure Start a new plot

Example:

x = linspace(-3*pi, 3*pi, 1000);
y1 = sin(x);
y2 = cos(x);

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

% Set the axis limits
axis([-3*pi, 3*pi, -1.5, 1.5])