Lecture 1: Introduction To MATLAB

Prof. Dr. Salina A.

Samad
Mr. Iskandar Yahya
 Information
2 Lectures (Thursday the 14th and 21st FEB)
Email: iskandar@vlsi.eng.ukm.my

Reserved computers with MATLAB application

at the Microcomputer Lab:
Monday – Thursday (2pm – 5pm)
Friday (3pm – 5pm)

MATLAB 7.5 (MATLAB R2007b)

 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

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

 History of MATLAB
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)

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,
Massachusetts MA, USA.
 MATLAB Environment
When you open MATLAB, you will see this
window:

Variable lists
/Current
Directory Main
typing/command
window

Command
history
 MATLAB Environment
MATLAB can function as normal calculator:

Can define variables in MATLAB:

>> a = 5;
>> b = 3; Can be any character or strings of
>> c = 8; character as long as it is not separated
>> x = a + b/c by “space”.
x= **But we cannot use names that have
5.3750 already been used by MATLAB as the
predefined functions and variables.
 MATLAB Environment
To see the variables currently stored: WHO
>> who
Your variables are:
A a b c x

Detailed variable information: WHOS

>> whos
Name Size Bytes
Class

A 1x1 8 double
array
a 1x1 8 double
array
b 1x1 8 double
array
c 1x1 8 double
array
 MATLAB Environment
To clear variables: CLEAR
>> clear a b c >> clear
>> who >> who
Your variables are: >>
A x

Saving and loading variables: SAVE/LOAD

>> save >> save test
Saving to: matlab.mat >> load test
>> load
Loading from: matlab.mat

MATLAB is Case-Sensitive. Be careful when

typing.
 MATLAB Environment
Most powerful command in MATLAB: HELP
Try typing “help” - list of all help topics
You can get help of specific functions and
commands that you like
Try “help variables”, and also “help save
variables” etc.
All about MATLAB is accessible by clicking
START and then choose MATLAB Help.

Effectively, you can leave this lecture now

and learn everything from MATLAB Help.
On the MATLAB Help window, run demos.
 MATLAB Environment
Built-in math functions:
 MATLAB Environment
Predefined Variables:
“Ans”, “sin()” and “pi” are examples of
predefined variables. Do Not define a variable
with these names, or try to change them.
What other predefined variables are there?

Handle Complex numbers:

>> n = 3+4i;
>> m = 1+i;
>> mul = m*n
mul =
-1.0000 + 7.0000i
>> real(mul)
ans =
-1
 MATLAB Environment
Matrices and Vectors:
Create matrices by using square brackets,
separate rows by semicolon, each element
separated
>> by2 coma
Matrix_A = [1 3 ; 4 5 6or
; space:
>> Matrix_B =
7 8 9] [9,8,7;6,5,4;3,2,1]
Matrix_A = Matrix_B =
1 2 3 9 8 7
4 5 6 6 5 4
7 8 9 3 2 1

Inverse a matrix using “inv(A)”, where “A” is

your matrix. Similarly, we can get the
Determinant by using “det(A)”.

Find out what other predefined functions are

 MATLAB Environment
Strings:
Character strings are enclosed in single quote –
>> Y = 'MATLAB is very powerful‘
Y=
MATLAB is very powerful
To use quotes, use double single quotes for a
single quote, and one double quote for a double
quote (What?!) E.g:
>> word = 'did''t‘ >> word = 'did"t‘
word = word =
did't did"t

String indexing is used to refer to a specific

“letter” in the string:
 MATLAB Environment
Example:
>> me = 'Iskandar‘
me =
Iskandar

>>me(1)
ans =
I

>>me(5)
ans =
n

>>me(8)
ans =
r
 MATLAB Environment
Other string funtions:
length - Return the number of character
strings
strcmp - Compares two strings
str2num - Converts a string to a numerical
value, i.e. converts ‘123’ to 123.
strrep - Replaces characters in a string with
different characters (very useful in editing
programs and debugging)
upper - Converts a string to uppercase
lower - Converts a string to lowercase
 MATLAB Environment
Input and Output statement:
Use semicolon at the end of your line to
suppress the display- matlab will carry out the
calculation without displaying the result. Try
this
 fprintf – Use this command to generate a text
>> fprintf('This is a test. \n')
line:
This is a test.

Thefprintf('
>> “\n” isThis
included
\n is \n ato\nprompt
test. \n ')the display to start a
This
new line, e.g.:
is
a
test.
 MATLAB
Environment
fprintf – to display the value of variables, we
can include a “%g” format character:
>> A = 3.45
A=
3.4500

>> fprintf('The value of A is %g. \n',

A)
The value of A is 3.45.
Information from user can be asked using
input function:
>> num = input('Specify a number. \n');
Specify a number.
2
>> fprintf('The number u entered is %g. \n',
num);
The number u entered is 2.
 MATLAB
Environment
Plotting in MATLAB Intro:
Use plot function. Example of plotting then
function y=|x|sin(x). Use linspace function to
generate domain variable x, i.e.
linspace(x1,x2,n).
This function generates n equally spaced values
from x1 to x2 and stores them in x as a one-
dimensional array with one row:
>> x = linspace(0,5,11)
x=
Columns 1 through 9
0 0.5000 1.0000 1.5000 2.0000 2.5000 3.0000
3.5000 4.0000
Columns 10 through 11
4.5000 5.0000
 MATLAB
Environment
Plotting in MATLAB Intro:
Use plot as plot(x,y). This function plots the
values stored in array y versus the array of x.
The two arrays must have the same number of
values:
>> x=linspace(-100,100,5000);
>> y=abs(x).*sin(x);
>> plot(x,y)

• The abs
function returns
the absolute
values of x.
•This is the
generated plot:
 MATLAB
Environment
Plotting in MATLAB Intro:
We can also plot multiple traces on a single
plot:
>>
x=linspace(0,2*pi,100)
;
>> y1=sin(x);
>> y2=cos(x);
>> y3=sin(x).*sin(x);
>> plot(x,y1,x,y2,x,y3)
 MATLAB
Environment
Plotting in MATLAB Intro:
We use xlable, ylable, title and legend
tocomplete the plot:
>> xlabel('x');
>> ylabel('y');
>> title('Various
trigonometric
Function');
>> legend('sin(x)',
'cos(x)',
'sin(x)*sin(x)');
• This example is
just a tiny fraction
of MATLAB’s full
range plotting
capabilities. We
shall see that later.
 MATLAB
Environment
Predefined Functions in this chapter:

sin abs fprintf log help save

load sqrt real imag angle inv
rand det lentgh strcmp str2num upper
lower input plot linspace xlabel ylabel
title legend lookfor which roots