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6.2) Data Types


  • Every variable defined within Matlab is assigned to a data class according to its type.
  • Each class has a corresponding kind of array (an array being the generalized form of a matrix).
  • Matlab has 16 fundamental classes, as shown below:
  • Image taken from http://www.mathworks.co.uk/help/matlab/matlab_prog/fundamental-matlab-classes.html

  • The classes covered in this course are char, numeric (mostly double), cell and structure.
  • We have already come across variables of class double when we were doing simple calculations, as well as the char class when we introduced Matlab variables.
  • [matlab]
    >> a=3;
    >> b='hello world';
    >> whos
    Name Size Bytes Class
    a 1x1 8 double
    b 1x11 22 char
    [/matlab]