Exercises

Please complete each exercise or answer the question before reviewing the posted solution comments.

1. Which of the following function names are not valid? and why?

   • new
   • HighestValue
   • 1stPoint
   • inside Polygon
   • costIn$
   • sales-cost
   • new - the word "new is a reserved word in many languages and is not at all descriptive, but it is a valid name in Matlab. Though, we really recommend against using "new" as the name of anything.
   • Highest_Value - is a valid name for a function or variable.
   • 1stPoint - is not a valid name in Matlab because names can not start with digits.
   • inside Polygon - is not a valid name in Matlab because names can not contain blank spaces.
   • costIn$ - is not a valid name in Matlab because names can not contain the $ character.
   • sales-cost - is not a valid name in Matlab because names can not contain the - character which is recognized as a minus sign indicating the subtraction operation.

2. Which of the following function names are not valid? and why?

   • length
   • size
   • i
   • char
   • length - is a valid name for a function or variable but we advise that you not use it since it will override the pre-defined function named length.
   • size - is a valid name for a function or variable but we advise that you not use it since it will override the pre-defined function named size.
   • i - is a valid name for a function or variable but we advise that you not use it since it will override the pre-defined variable named i which stores the value of the imaginary number, the square root of -1.
   • char - is a valid name for a function or variable but we advise that you not use it since it will override the pre-defined variable named char which returns the ASCII value of a specified character.