FIR filter has output of same length as its input?

If the input signal has length L samples, impulse repsonse has length M samples, entering these L samples to FIR filter using conv function, will get L+M-1 output samples, while entering these L samples to FIR fitler, the output has L samples only instead of L+M-1 samples . Also, I'd like to know which L samples does FIR filter choose from L+M-1 samples (total samples) to be its output ?.

Answer 1

[Bruno Luong]

There is the the difference equation in the "Rational Transfer Function" part of the doc. x(i) with i<=0 are supposed to be 0.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/filter.html

and you can figure out easily just by experiment

>> x=rand(1,10)

x =

    0.1576    0.9706    0.9572    0.4854    0.8003    0.1419    0.4218    0.9157    0.7922    0.9595

>> b=rand(1,3)

b =

    0.9340    0.6787    0.7577

>> conv(x,b) % <= 'full' option

ans =

    0.1472    1.0135    1.6722    1.8385    1.8022    1.0435    1.0966    1.2491    1.6810    2.1277    1.2515    0.7270

>> filter(b,1,x)

ans =

    0.1472    1.0135    1.6722    1.8385    1.8022    1.0435    1.0966    1.2491    1.6810    2.1277

[Nader Rihan]

Thanks