Adding comments in MATLAB code

Adding comments to code is always considered a good practice. Comments are statements or annotations written within the source code to make the code easier for humans to understand. Comments are simply ignored at the time of compilation/execution.

MATLAB provides two types of comments: 

• Single-Line Comments  
• Multi-Line Comments

Single-Line Comments: They are denoted by ‘%’ (percentage sign). It implies that the comment is applied to a single line only which means that everything following ‘%’ in a line is a comment and thus not executed.

Multi-Line Comments: They are denoted by ‘%{‘ (percentage sign and opening curly bracket) and ‘%}’ (percentage sign and closing curly bracket). Everything is written between ‘%{‘ and ‘%}’ is a comment and thus not executed.

Writing code in the MATLAB environment is quite simple. We do not need to include any libraries/header files, we can directly start writing commands in the command window of the Editor. Usually, we write small and easily executable programs in the Command Window and larger programs with multiple lines and functions in the Editor.

Now, we will see the syntax of a MATLAB program. Let us begin with the very basic code to display ‘Hello World’ as the output in the command window:

Example:

 
Here, disp() is a function used to display the desired value as the output.

Output: 

Likewise, we can perform any basic operation in the command window. Let’s have a look at a few of them. 

Example :

 
Output : 

In the above output, ‘ans’ is a default variable in MATLAB that stores the value of the most recent output. This variable is only created when output is generated without any specific argument to it. 

Example: 

 
Output : 

Thus, we can perform various mathematical operations in the MATLAB command window.  The following table summarizes the various operations along with their syntax that can be performed in MATLAB: