How to use Matlab m-files and diary files
  
                        Math 305  


The "command window" is the window in which you enter commands.
You can clear it of old junk by clicking on the EDIT button, 
going down to and clicking on "Clear Command Window".

An m-file is a list of commands and text comments. It is a text file
with extension .m. It can be created with by any text editor, although 
MS-Windows versions of Matlab have a built in m-file editor. 
Your first step then is to figure out how to make an m-file on your 
system. A sample m-file is attached.

The m-file is run or executed from the command window, by typing
its name (without the .m). The one I made is called "probsetA.m,"
so I would need to type "probsetA."  A line preceded by the percent 
symbol (%) is a comment, and will be displayed verbatim. Otherwise,
Matlab will execute the line as a Matlab command. If there is an error
Matlab will print a (probably useless) error message, and then stop.
You go back to the m-file and fix it up and try again. It is expected
that you will learn a lot by trail & error. Thus, you should never copy 
someone else's work, as you will not learn much that way.

In your homework you should use comments to explain what you are doing.
One can then print the output from the command window. However, you can 
also direct the output of the m-file to output file called a "diary" file. 
I have done this in my example. A diary file is a simple text file (with
extension .txt). Thus, m-files are input file and diary files are output 
files. 

For your homework, turn in only the output, but use the "echo on" command
so I can see the commands you used. Note that graphs appear in separate 
windows. Make sure your graphs are well labeled; the label should indicate 
which problem the graph is for.

You should read Chapter 4 of the Matlab book for more information. Your
first Matlab assignment is to do all of Problem Set A; see pages 47-49
of the Matlab book.