MATLAB Commands

MATLAB Commands

MATLAB (stands for matrix laboratory) is a high-level programming environment for scientific calculation, and it provides functions more efficiently than other programming languages. In addition, it has many in-build modules and integration with Simulink, which helps in complex computation.

MATLAB commands are very helpful to users to establish connection with the application. Using a command-line interface, the user can interact with the software using MATLAB's various commands.

The primary purpose of MATLAB commands is to work with the system like import/export data, loading files to carry out the application functions.

It provides various commands to serve different purposes; for example, to clear the screen, we use the command ">>clear."

Let us look into some basic MATLAB commands

COMMANDS	PURPOSE
clear	It clears variables from the memory
what	MATLAB files are listed in the current directory
pwd	Current directory is displayed
date	Current date is displayed
help	Just type this command at command window if you want any kind of guide or help
who	This command helps to list the current variable
type	Content of a file is displayed
exist	Existence of a variable is checked with the help of this command
clc	Command window gets cleared
global	A variable is declared as global by using this command
disp	Content of array or string is displayed
fscanf	Formatted data from a file is read.
input	To prompt for input
format	Screen-display format
fprintf	Writes formatted files to screen or file
;	Screen printing
quit	Exits from MATLAB
lookfor	To help entries for keyword

Let us execute some of the above-mentioned commands.

Commands like ‘whos’, ‘date’, ‘what’ are executed.

Commands like ‘pwd’, ‘help’, ‘disp’, ‘who’ are executed.

Now let us look into some intermediate and advance MATALB commands

Commands related to files and directory information

dir	Contents of current directory are listed out.
rmdir	To remove a directory
mkdir	To create new directory
cd	To change directory
copyfile	To copy a file
editpath	Search path changes
Is	Current file contents are listed
path	MATLAB search path (sets or gets)
delete	To Delete file
diary	To save the text generated in MATLAB session
!	Thiscommand provide access to Operating system.
wklread	This command read .wk1 spreadsheet file.

Commands related to ON-LINE help

Any kind of help regarding the user manual or procedure to check out any features of the software can be fetched with the help of these on-line commands.

help	To provide basic help info
helpdesk	Browser based help is provided
demo	To run demo program
doc	Web HTML documentation
info	MATLAB information is displayed
whatsnew	ReadMe files are displayed
echo	Script file echo command
home	To send cursor home

Let us execute some of the above-mentioned commands.

Commands like ‘helpdesk’, ‘demo’, ‘doc’ are executed.

Commands for general use

General use in the sense to fetch basic information of our computer like date and time or type of computer we use. Let us look few of them mentioned below.

computer	Returns which type of computer your using
clock	Vector format of clock time and data
more	Paged output is controlled
ver	License and version of MATLAB data is displayed
bench	To provides benchmarks
^c(Control-c)	To locally abort
startup	To execute M-file
tic	To start stopwatch
toc	To read the time of stopwatch
etime	To find elapsed time function
cputime	To find elapsed CPU time
matlabarc	Master start-up file

Let us execute some of the above-mentioned commands.

Commands like ‘computer’, ‘clock’, ‘ver’, ‘bench’, ‘tic’, ‘tac’, ‘cputime’ are executed.

Commands ‘ver’ and ‘bench’ are executed.

Commands  ‘tic’, ‘tac’, ‘cputime’ are executed.

Commands on mathematical computations

Here are few MATLAB commands which are especially programmed for carrying out various mathematical computations like array manipulation, solving linear algebra, integration, polynomial, calculus, elementary math, etc.

Commands for Matrix arithmetic
eye	An identity matrix is created
ones	Array of ones is created
zeros	Array of zeros is created
dot	To generate Dot product of two matrices
cross	To generate cross product of two matrices
Commands for array operations
cat	To concatenate two arrays
length	To calculate no. of elements in the array
min	Minimum value of array is returned
max	Maximum value of array is returned
Commands for matrix for linear equations
rank	Returns the rank of a matrix
det	Determinant of the matrix is returned
inv	To return inverse of a matrix.
Commands for polynomial
poly2sym(vector)	This helps to convert vector to symbolic polynomial.
poly2sym(vector,’v’)	This is also similar to poly2sym(vector).
Commands for strings
findstr	To find start index in a given string.
strcmp	To compare two given strings, returns 1 if match is found or else it returns 0.
linsolve()	To solve linear expressions.
contour()	To solve linear expressions.

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