The advantage of this is that Matlab code is easy to debug. When I write Matlab code, I have an editor open in one window and I run Matlab in another window. Then I write a few lines of code, and I cut that code out of the edit window and paste it into the Matlab window to test it. This is very useful and fast.
The disadvantage is that the interpreter is extremely slow. Therefore, to make Matlab a useful tool for numerical simulation, it is critical that you try to write code that utilizes the compiled (and consequently, fast) subroutines more than it utilizes the interpreter. I talk about this more below.
Looping is done with the for command. The syntax is
>> for i = first : increment : last
commands
end
The default increment is one. For example,
>> for i = 1:n
sum = sum + x(i)*y(i);
end
calculate the dot product of x and y.
Conditional statements are evaluated with the if, while and switch commands. The syntax for if is
>> if expression
commands
elseif expression
commands
else
commands
end
Matlab allows the user to write programs, save them on the disk, and then to execute them. These programs are called m-files. By convention, they are named foo.m. To see an example of an m-file type
>> help functionThis shows a function for computing the mean and standard deviation of a vector x.
The format for a matlab m-file is shown in the stat function. Copy that format for your m-files. Another version of a m-file was shown in the ODE section of this web-page,
>> type lotkaThis file specifies the right hand side of an ordinary differential equation that models a population of predators and their prey.
My standard of good may be a bit different from what other standards of good are, but by "good Matlab code", I mean, code that runs fast and is understandable to people beyond its author.
Its relatively easy to write code that others can understand. Add comments to your code to explain what you are doing. If a segment of code needs more than a few of lines of comments, break it up into smaller parts and comment those, or put it into an m-file.
Code that runs fast is code that does not invoke the Matlab interpreter disproprotionately often compared to the Matlab software. Obviously, this is more important for large and difficult problems, but its a good thing to keep in mind at all times.
To demostrate the Matlab interpreter's slow speed, we will consider the problem of multiplying two 100 by 100 matrices. In the following code segment, I define three matrices, A, B and C, and multiply them together by computing the inner product of the rows of A with the columns of B. This code is similar to code you would write if you were using C or FORTRAN.
>> % Matrix multiplication example using full looping
>>
>> n = 100; A = rand(n); B=rand(n); C=zeros(n);
>> t = cputime;
>> for i=1:n,
for j=1:n,
for k=1:n
C(i,j) = C(i,j) + (A(i,k)*B(k,j));
end
end
end
>> t = cputime-t
t = 97.9600
Notice that this segment of code required 98 seconds to compute the answer
on my SGI O2. There are nine permutations of this scheme, and
all have similar timings.
We now consider using the colon range operator to compute the product of A and B by looping over all of the elements of the resulting matrix C. Notice that what is being computed for a given i and j is the dot product of the i^(th) row of A with the j^(th) column of B.
>> % Matrix multiplication example using inner products
>>
>> t = cputime;
>> for i=1:n,
for j=1:n
C(i,j) = A(i,:)*B(:,j);
end
end
>> t = cputime-t
t =
2.6600
This segment of code took 2.66 seconds to complete the calculation. By
eliminating the inner loop, we have decreased the effort required to compute
C by a factor of 37 times!
Finally, we make use of the * operator, i.e. we use the full compiled code to compute C.
>> t = cputime; C = A*B; t = cputime-t
t =
0.0400
This segment of code took 0.04 seconds, a savings of 2450 times over the fully
looped calculation and 66 times over the inner product calculation.
You would not want to program matrix multiplication if you are using Matlab, but this example should serve as an illustration of the kind of code that you should avoid writting if possible.
On the other hand, be careful that you don't get too carried away with this process. The following code segments assign a vector to the sum the first j elements of another vector, i.e.
clear; n=2000; x = 1:n; x = x(:); y = zeros(n,1); % case 1 -- no vectorization t=cputime; for j=1:n, for k=1:j, y(j)=y(j)+x(k); end, end, cputime-t % case 2 -- partial vectorization t=cputime; for j=1:n, y(j)=sum(x(1:j)); end, cputime-t % case 3 -- full vectorization t=cputime; y = tril(ones(n))*x; cputime-tThe partially vectorized case is much faster than the case without any vectorization, but the fully vectorized case takes more time than the partially vectorized case because it computes too many multiplications that are equal to zero.
I'll close this section with a couple of suggestions for writing efficient Matlab code.
>> n = 11; x = rand(n); y = rand(n)
>> z = x(1:2:n) + y(1:2:n)
>> for i=1:2:n z(i) = x(i) + y(i); end
David Eyre