

Now the “.parens” notation makes that easier.
#Matlab 2009 open variables code#
I will also find that people use EVAL to get at certain fields in a structure (for example data.alpha) when they do not know at the time of writing the code what field they will want. MATLAB user will often string together MATLAB commands to get sequential variable names s1, s2, s3… only to then have to use another EVAL statement to work with the sequential variable names! Very often, a cell array indexed with s… would work much better. Why are people cautioned against using global variables? I will leave that to the consensus on Wikipedia.ĮVAL is right up there with globals. Rather than pass variables from one function to another, they were just being made global. Most of the time I have seen globals being used it was a situation where the code author did not understand scoping of variables. Exception: functions TIC and TOC use them quite nicely. I have never seen MATLAB code where globals were the right thing to do. This is not entirely practical, so I will at least break the code into logical sections that do fit on screen all at once. I try to use the rule that I should be able to see an entire script or function in one screen. This makes your code hard to read, maintain and understand.Įven if not hard coding data into a MATLAB code file, it is easy to just add on “just a few more lines of code” until you have thousands of lines of code in a single script. All but a small amount of that was data written out in ASCII. The worst instance I ever saw of this was some MATLAB code where the. I would think twice about a 10×10, and I would start using one of our file readers for a 100 x 100.

For instance, I would feel fine putting a 3×3 matrix into my code. That makes sense for small variables (I will let you define what small means for you). Some people like to put some of their variables directly into the MATLAB code. These just do not convey as much information to people that have to read your code as flagPassedInspection, centroidX, fidCurrentFile.Ĥ.) Hard coding data into the MATLAB code file Meaningful variable names are a great opportunity to make the meaning of your code more clear and to some degree, self-documenting.Īvoid using variable names like temp, aaa, r247899921. Variable names are often the only commenting that gets added to people’s code. White space is free, use it to make your code look good. Not putting blank lines between sections of code can also make it harder to read. I try to avoid using variables and function names that are common terms like, mean, filter, etc… If there is any doubt, use the which command to find out if a function exists of a given name.Ħ.) Not using white space to good effect in code.Įven though you can put several commands on one line if separated by a semicolon, these lines can often be hard to notice. Unfortunately, MATLAB does not catch you doing this for the most part.

Some strange behavior can occur when you redefine a function like that. When you do this, MATLAB will call whichever one is higher on the path.
#Matlab 2009 open variables software#
Most professionally produced software sticks with the defaults, it ends up looking better.ħ.) Using ans, or any other MATLAB function as a variable name or function. Sticking with the default colors is a good move. Very quickly they end up with several different colored buttons, a non-standard background color, extra big buttons, etc… In an effort to emphasize certain buttons on their GUI, people will change the colors of them. Here is an example of changing the visualization to make it clearer and less taxing on memory. There is very often a better visualization available. If I try to plot datasets with huge amounts of data in them, they will very often just look like a blob and slow the machine down in the process.

My computer monitor has 2.3 million pixels, total. That is why I always use a left hand zero like 0.5. P, 13 years later I still remember that one! -smile-) Well into the night working on a MATLAB homework assignment that would “take ten minutes, fifteen if you type slow.” (yes, Dr. I learned this one bleary eyed evening as an undergraduate. Without further ado: The top ten and quick ways to not do them:Ĭertain things must be learned the hard way. I was chatting with the Application Support Engineers here at MathWorks about what kind of coding practices cause avoidable pain for MATLAB users.
