TABLE OF CONTENTS The objectives of this chapter are:
To enable you to become familiar with some of the more common MATLAB functions.
To introduce you briefly to ways of importing and exporting data in and out of the MATLAB workspace using:
The load and save commands.
The Import Wizard.
The low-level file input/output (I/O) functions.
So far you should be able to write a MATLAB program which inputs data, performs simple arithmetic operations on the data, perhaps involving loops and decisions, and displays the results of the computation in a comprehensible form. However, more interesting problems in science and engineering are likely to involve special mathematical functions like sines, cosines, logarithms, etc. MATLAB comes with a large collection of such functions; we have seen some of them already. This chapter introduces you to the more common functions available in MATLAB. In addition, you may wish to import data to be plotted or operated on mathematically, and export data for future use. Hence, this chapter also introduces you to the importing of data into the MATLAB workspace from various sources. It also discusses the exporting of data to files in your work directory for later use with MATLAB or with other software tools.
Tables of MATLAB functions and commands appear in Appendix C. A short list of some of the more common ones follows. Use helpwin at the command line to see a list of categories of functions, with links to descriptions of the...
