How to get DOCUMENTATION on matlab
For documentation, there is an introduction to Matlab in the On-Line Help
facility. Type the following command at the athena% prompt to see
this page of general resources and links:
help matlab
In addition to being a useful introduction to Matlab, the document also tells
how to buy additional Matlab documentation.
The consultant's office, on the first floor of N42, also has a copy of
Matlab documentation that can be read in the office.
Other sources of information are available in Matlab itself. Typing "help"
lists the directories in your MATLABPATH variable. This is the search
path Matlab uses to find functions. To see what is in each directory,
type "help dir_name" where dir_name is one of the directories in the
MATLABPATH. For example, here is a partial result of typing "help":
HELP topics:
matlab/general - General purpose commands.
matlab/ops - Operators and special characters.
matlab/lang - Language constructs and debugging.
matlab/elmat - Elementary matrices and matrix manipulation.
matlab/specmat - Specialized matrices.
matlab/elfun - Elementary math functions.
Typing "help matlab/elfun" then lists each command in that directory
along with a short description of the command. For a more complete
description of the command, type "help command_name" at the matlab prompt.
For example, typing "help fft" gives:
>> help fft
FFT Discrete Fourier transform.
FFT(X) is the discrete Fourier transform of vector X. If the
length of X is a power of two, a fast radix-2 fast-Fourier
transform algorithm is used. If the length of X is not a
power of two, a slower non-power-of-two algorithm is employed.
FFT(X,N) is the N-point FFT, padded with zeros if X has less
than N points and truncated if it has more.
If X is a matrix, the FFT operation is applied to each column.
See also IFFT, FFT2, IFFT2, FFTSHIFT.
The MathWorks' web-based "Help Desk" includes a full documentation set
in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format, a searchable command index, and links
to other information. It can be started from matlab:
>> helpdesk
or from Athena
athena% add matlab; matlabdoc
and will open up in your web browser.
Finally, there is the "demo" command. This has a number of different demos,
and each demo shows the commands in use, along with a brief explanation.
You may find it useful to run through the demos to get an idea of how Matlab
can best be used.
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