TABLE OF CONTENTS MATLAB and Simulink are software packages themselves. The MathWorks company looks to improve their software by correcting bugs and adding features. A natural question for a software user is, "Do I need to replace the current version that I have?" Often, the answer is "no," unless there is a compelling reason, such as a bug fix on a function used in your simulation. Or perhaps the updated version supports a new feature that you would use. If you want the security of having the latest available software version, The MathWorks provides a "Maintenance Service" for their software, if you pay the maintenance fee.
Software producers are concerned with backwards compatibility, the idea that new versions of software should work with older versions. As a result, it is expected that what worked with version n will also work with version n + 1. But the older versions, of course, do not support the new features. For example, using the double-ampersand to mean "AND" did not appear until recently in MATLAB, though other languages commonly use it. A statement such as the following:
if ((a == 3) && (b == 0)) ...
may cause a problem, depending on the MATLAB version.
Here is a small program using the double-ampersand to AND two conditions.
a = 3;b = 0;if ((a == 3) && (b == 0)) disp('yes ' );else disp('no');endWe will call it testversion.m When we run...
