% look at the help button, click at help window; keep that window around % for help on specific commands or topics. That's more convenient than using % help ... directly in the matlab command window. % examples of regular vectors that give an empty as an answer: 3:-1:4 ans = Empty matrix: 1-by-0 3:2 ans = Empty matrix: 1-by-0 % To look at the script called up by my command page13 % use the following: type page13 % from page 13 n = 21; x = linspace(0,1,n); y = sin(2*pi*x); plot(x,y) title('The Function y = sin(2*pi*x)') xlabel('x (in radians)') ylabel('y') % to edit a matlab file, you can use the edit command; it brings up a % separate window, for editing: edit ExpPlot % The editing involved vectorization of a function evaluation and resulting % in the following cleaner version of the book's ExpPlot script from page 16: type ExpPlot % Script File: ExpPlot % Examines the function % % f(x) = ((1 + x/24)/(1 - x/24 + x^2/384))^8 % % as an approximation to exp(z) across [0,1]. close all x = linspace(0,1,200); y= ((1 + x/24)./(1 - x/24 + x.^2/384)).^8; plot(x,y,x,exp(x)) % .. and it does exactly what it was supposed to do: ExpPlot % QUESTION: what happens when you forget the . somewhere during vectorization: % ANSWER: let's try it out: x = 1:21; x/x ans = 1.0000 % ... Well, matlab always tries to make some sense of your input. In this case % it will be only much later in this course that you will understand this :-) diary off