MATLAB Programming Fundamentals - MathWorks

Symbol Symbol Name Role Description Examples

~ Tilde

• Logical NOT


• Argument placeholder

Use the tilde symbol to represent logical NOT or to suppress specific input or output arguments.

• not


• “Ignore Function Inputs” on page 21-13


• “Ignore Function Outputs” on page 1-4

Calculate the logical NOT of a matrix:

A = eye(3);

~A

Determine where the elements of A are not equal to those of B:

A = [1 -1; 0 1]

B = [1 -2; 3 2]

A~=B

Return only the third output value of union:

[~,~,iB] = union(A,B)

= Equal sign Assignment

Use the equal sign to assign values to a variable. The syntax B = A stores the elements of A in

variable B.

NoteThe = character is for assignment, whereas the == character is for comparing the elements in

two arrays. See eq for more information.

Create a matrix A. Assign the values in A to a new variable, B. Lastly, assign a new value to the first element in

B.

A = [1 0; -1 0];

B = A;

B(1) = 200;

String and Character Formatting

Some special characters can only be used in the text of a character vector or string. You

can use these special characters to insert new lines or carriage returns, specify folder

paths, and more.

Use the special characters in this table to specify a folder path using a character vector or

string.

Symbol Symbol Name Role Description Examples

/

\

Slash and Backslash File or folder path separation

In addition to their use as mathematical operators, the slash and backslash

characters separate the elements of a path or folder. On Microsoft Windows based

systems, both slash and backslash have the same effect. On The Open Group UNIX

based systems, you must use slash only.

On a Windows system, you can use either backslash or slash:

dir([matlabroot '\toolbox\matlab\elmat\shiftdim.m'])

dir([matlabroot '/toolbox/matlab/elmat/shiftdim.m'])

On a UNIX system, use only the forward slash:

dir([matlabroot '/toolbox/matlab/elmat/shiftdim.m'])

2 Program Components