MATLAB Programming Fundamentals - MathWorks

Create Help Summary Files — Contents.m

In this section...

“What Is a Contents.m File?” on page 30-12

“Create a Contents.m File” on page 30-12

“Check an Existing Contents.m File” on page 30-13

What Is a Contents.m File?

A Contents.m file provides a summary of the programs in a particular folder. The help,

doc, and ver functions refer to Contents.m files to display information about folders.

Contents.m files contain only comment lines. The first two lines are headers that

describe the folder. Subsequent lines list the program files in the folder, along with their

descriptions. Optionally, you can group files and include category descriptions. For

example, view the functions available in the codetools folder:

help codetools

Commands for creating and debugging code

MATLAB Version 9.3 (R2017b) 24-Jul-2017

Editing and publishing

edit - Edit or create a file

grabcode - Copy MATLAB code from published HTML

mlint - Check files for possible problems

publish - Publish file containing cells to output file

snapnow - Force snapshot of image for published document

Directory tools

mlintrpt - Run mlint for file or folder, reporting results in browser

visdiff - Compare two files (text, MAT, or binary) or folders

...

If you do not want others to see a summary of your program files, place an empty

Contents.m file in the folder. An empty Contents.m file causes help foldername to

report No help found for foldername. Without a Contents.m file, the help and

doc commands display a generated list of all program files in the folder.

Create a Contents.m File

When you have a set of existing program files in a folder, the easiest way to create a

Contents.m file is to use the Contents Report. The primary purpose of the Contents

30 Custom Help and Documentation