MATLAB Programming Tutorials For Beginners With Examples

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MATLAB Programming Tutorials

MATLAB stands for the MATrix LaBoratory. It is a specialized-purpose computer program optimized to perform scientific and engineering calculations. MATLAB is also called a technical programming language. Began with simple matrix manipulation and was built with the capability of solving any technical problem.

It is a proprietary programming language that is developed by MathWorks. MAT-LAB is not available for free or it is not open source software, you need to pay some amount for this. MAT-LAB offers a very extensive library of predefined functions to do technical programming tasks simple, easy, and more effective.

MATLAB is preferred to other languages like C, FORTRAN, etc. The MAT-LAB can be interfaced with different kinds of hardware like Arduino, TMS320C6713, FPGA, NI DAQ, etc to enhance the data processing capabilities of MATLAB.

It is very helpful for people working in the field like research, development, and design challenges. MATLAB can solve many problems that are faced by engineers and scientists such as pressure to meet deadlines while deciding design tradeoffs, developing a variety of projects and tasks that are rarely straightforward, the proliferation of products and technologies, experimenting and programming are expensive, etc these all challenges can be solved by using MATLAB.

Topics That I Will Cover In MATLAB Programming Tutorials

General commands
Arithmetic operations
Vector / array operations
Logical operations
Complex numbers and operations
Control statements
Loops
Plots

01. General Commands

MATLAB commands	Operation

clc	Clear the screen
disp (‘HELLO’)	Display the string HELLO
disp(a)	Display the array “a” or value of “a”
x = input(‘value of x’)	Allow the user to enter the value of x from the keyboard

02. Arithmetic Operations

MATLAB commands	Operation

+	Addition
–	Subtraction
*	Multiplication
/	Division
^	power

Examples:

MATLAB Instructions	Result
a = 3;
b = 4;
c = 5;
d= a+b	>>7
e = a*c	>>15
f = (a+b)/c	>>1.4
e = a^2+c-b	>>10

03. Vectors/Array Operations

MATLAB Instructions	Description	Result

a = [1 2 3]	Create a row vector	a= [1 2 3]
b = [ 1; 2; 3]	Create a column vector	Watch video for result
c = [10 2 3; 4 50 6; 7 8 90]	Create a ( 3*3) matrix
d = c * b	Matrix multiplication
e = inv(c)	The inverse of the square matrix
f =transpose(c)

Note: MATLAB allows arithmetic operations with elements of matrices and arrays. Few examples are shown here.

g = c(1,2)*b(2)	Multiplication of elements of two matrices	>>g = 4
h = c(2,3)+a(3)	Addition of elements of two matrices	>>h = 9
k = c(3,2)^2	Square of that element	>>k =64

Note: MATLAB allows array operations to be performed element by element. Here are some examples.

a = [1 2 3 4 ];
b = [2 2 5 1 ];
c = a.*b	Multiplies element by element	c = [2 4 15 4 ]
c = a./b	Divide element by element	c = [0.5 1.0 0.6 4.0]

04. Logical Operations

MATLAB commands	Operation
Assuming both ‘a’ and ‘b’ have Boolean values ( 1 or 0)
c=a\|b	Logical OR
c=a&b	Logical AND
c= ~a	Logical NOT
C= xor(a,b)	Logical XOR
The same logical operations can also be done with arrays.

Examples:

MATLAB Instructions	Result
a = 1;
b = 0;
c = 0;
d= a\|c	>>1
e = b\|c	>>0
f = a&b	>>0
e = a&d	>>1
g = ~a	>>0
h = xor(a,b)	>>1
a=[1 0 1];
b=[0 0 1];
c=a\|b	>>[ 1 0 1]
c=a&b	>>[ 0 0 1]
c=~b	>>[ 1 1 0]
c=xor(a,b)	>>[1 0 0]

05. Complex Numbers And Operations

MATLAB commands	Operation
Assuming both ‘a’ and ‘b’ real numbers
c=complex(a,b)	form a complex number c= a+ j b
d = real (c)	extract the real part of complex number c
d= imag(c)	extract the imaginary part of complex number c
d= abs(c)	The absolute value of complex number c
d = conj (c)	The conjugate of c ( a – j b)
d = angle (c )	It will find an angle.
All other arithmetic operations can be performed on complex numbers, which result in a complex number.

Examples:

MATLAB Instructions	Result
a = 3.0;
b = 4.0;
c1 = complex(a,b) or c1=a+1i*b	>>c1 = 3+j 4
c2 = complex(6,8) or c2=6+8i	>>c1 = 6+j 8
d = c1 + c2	>>d = 9 + j 12
d = c1 * c2	>>d = -14 + j48
d = c1 – c2	>>d = -3 – j4
c3 = conj (c1)	>>c3 = 3 – j4
e = real (c3)	>>e = 3
f = imag (c3)	>>f = -4
Phi =angle(c3)	>>phi =-0.9273
c4 = c3^2	>>c4 = -7- j 24
c1 = (3+4i)	>>c1 = 3+j4
a=3;
b=4;
c1=(a+b*i)	>>3+j 4

06. Control Statements

General form:

if expression 1
   statements
elseif expression 2
   statements
elseif expression 3
   statements
...............
...............
else
   statements

Where,

Expressions 1, 2, 3, . . . .n are some relational expressions employing the following relational operators.

a = =b	if a equal to b
a>=b	if a is equal to and greater than b
a<=b	if a is equal to and less than b
a~=b	if a is not equal to b

Example 01:

a= 2;
b=3;
c=10;
if c<a*b
 disp(‘ hello 1’);
elseif c>a*b
 disp(‘ hello 2’)
else
 disp(‘hello 3’)
end

Example 02:

a=1;
b=2;
c=3;
d=b^2-4*a*c
if d > 0.0
disp(‘ real roots ‘);
root1= (-b + sqrt(d))/2.0
root2 = (-b – sqrt(d))/2.0
elseif d < 0.0
disp(‘ complex roots ‘);
f=sqrt(-d)/2
root1 = complex((-b/2),f)
root1 = complex((-b/2),-f)
else d==0.0
disp(‘ repeated roots’);
root1= -b/2
root2 = -b/2
end

07. Loops

a. For loop

General form:

for i=1:n
      statements;
      statements;
end

In the above example, “i” will be incremented by one after every cycle.

for time = 0.0 : 0.05 : 1.2
         statements
         statements
end

This FOR loop will be executed with an increment of 0.05 for the variable “time”.

Example:

This example computes electrical power Pe = 1.2 Sin (del) for 0.0 < del < pi

MATLAB Instructions	Result
n=0; for del = 0.0 : 0.4 : pi n=n+1; pe(n)=1.2*sin(del); end disp(pe);	>>pe = [ 0 0.467 0.86 1.118 1.199 1.09 0.81 0.402 ]

b. While loop

General form:

While expression
     statements
     .......
     .....
end

MATLAB Instructions	Result
n=0; del = 0.0 while del <=pi n=n+1; pe(n)=1.2*sin(del); del=del+0.4 end disp(pe);	pe = [ 0 0.467 0.86 1.118 1.199 1.09 0.81 0.402 ]

08. Plots

MATLAB commands	Operation

plot (a)	Plots the columns of array a versus their index
plot (a,b)	Plots vector b versus vector a
plot (a,b,a,c,a,d)	overlaid plots of (b Vs a), (c Vs a), ( d Vs a)
subplot(m,n,p)	Breaks the figure into (m x n ) matrix
grid on	Adds grid on the plot
title (‘ text’)	Adds the title ‘ text’ on top of the plot
xlabel(‘text’)	Adds ‘text’ along the x-axis
ylabel(‘text’)	Adds ‘text’ along the y-axis

Example:

MATLAB Instructions	Result
a=[0.5 0.77 0.91 0.82]; plot(a); grid on; xlabel(‘sample no.’); ylabel(‘width’); title(‘SAMPLE WIDTH’);	Watch the video for the result

MATLAB Instructions	Result
a=[0.5 0.7 0.9 1.2]; b = [ 1.2 1.44 1.67 1.06] plot(a,b); grid on; xlabel(‘time.(secs)’); ylabel(‘temp(deg c)’); title(‘TEMP PLOT’);	Watch the video for results

Watch the video on my YouTube Channel to understand it clearly. I hope this article may help you all a lot. Thank you for reading. If you have doubts related to this article “MATLAB Programming Tutorials”, then comment below.

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