ans = 
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Inspired by @xingxingcui's post about old MATLAB versions and @유장's post about an old Easter egg, I thought it might be fun to share some MATLAB-Old-Timer Stories™.
Back in the early 90s, MATLAB had been ported to MacOS, but there were some interesting wrinkles. One that kept me earning my money as a computer lab tutor was that MATLAB required file names to follow Windows standards - no spaces or other special characters. But on a Mac, nothing stopped you from naming your script "hello world - 123.m". The problem came when you tried to run it. MATLAB was essentially doing an eval on the script name, assuming the file name would follow Windows (and MATLAB) naming rules.
So now imagine a lab full of students taking a university course. As is common in many universities, the course was given a numeric code. For whatever historical reason, my school at that time was also using numeric codes for the departments. Despite being told the rules for naming scripts, many students would default to something like "26.165 - 1.1" for problem one on HW1 for the intro applied math course 26.165.
No matter what they did in their script, when they ran it, MATLAB would just say "ans = 25.0650".
Nothing brings you more MATLAB-god credibility as a student tutor than walking over to someone's computer, taking one look at their output, saying "rename your file", and walking away like a boss.
I recently published this blog post about resources to help people learn MATLAB https://blogs.mathworks.com/matlab/2025/09/11/learning-matlab-in-2025/
What are your favourite MATLAB learning resources?
It was 2010 when I was a sophomore in university. I chose to learn MATLAB because of a mathematical modeling competition, and the university provided MATLAB 7.0, a very classic release. To get started, I borrowed many MATLAB books from the library and began by learning simple numerical calculations, plotting, and solving equations. Gradually I was drawn in by MATLAB’s powerful capabilities and became interested; I often used it as a big calculator for fun. That version didn’t have MATLAB Live Script; instead it used MATLAB Notebook (M-Book), which allowed MATLAB functions to be used directly within Microsoft Word, and it also had the Symbolic Math Toolbox’s MuPAD interactive environment. These were later gradually replaced by Live Scripts introduced in R2016a. There are many similar examples...
Out of curiosity, I still have screenshots on my computer showing MATLAB 7.0 running compatibly. I’d love to hear your thoughts?
Edit 15 Oct 2025: Removed incorrect code. Replaced symmatrix2sym and symfunmatrix2symfun with sym and symfun respectively (latter supported as of 2024b).
The Symbolic Math Toolbox does not have its own dot and and cross functions. That's o.k. (maybe) for garden variety vectors of sym objects where those operations get shipped off to the base Matlab functions
x = sym('x',[3,1]); y = sym('y',[3,1]);
which dot(x,y)
dot(x,y)
which cross(x,y)
cross(x,y)
clearvars
x = symmatrix('x',[3,1]); y = symmatrix('y',[3,1]);
z = symmatrix('z',[1,1]);
sympref('AbbreviateOutput',false);
dot() expands the result, which isn't really desirable for exposition.
eqn = z == dot(x,y)
Also, dot() returns the the result in terms of the conjugate of x, which can't be simplifed away at the symmatrix level
assumeAlso(sym(x),'real')
class(eqn)
try
eqn = z == simplify(dot(x,y))
catch ME
ME.message
end
To get rid of the conjugate, we have to resort to sym
eqn = simplify(sym(eqn))
but again we are in expanded form, which defeats the purpose of symmatrix (et. al.)
But at least we can do this to get a nice equation
eqn = z == x.'*y
dot errors with symfunmatrix inputs
clearvars
syms t real
x = symfunmatrix('x(t)',t,[3,1]); y = symfunmatrix('y(t)',t,[3,1]);
try
dot(x,y)
catch ME
ME.message
end
Cross works (accidentally IMO) with symmatrix, but expands the result, which isn't really desirable for exposition
clearvars
x = symmatrix('x',[3,1]); y = symmatrix('y',[3,1]);
z = symmatrix('z',[3,1]);
eqn = z == cross(x,y)
And it doesn't work at all if an input is a symfunmatrix
syms t
w = symfunmatrix('w(t)',t,[3,1]);
try
eqn = z == cross(x,w);
catch ME
ME.message
end
In the latter case we can expand with
eqn = z == cross(sym(x),symfun(w)) % x has to be converted
But we can't do the same with dot (as shown above, dot doesn't like symfun inputs)
try
eqn = z == dot(sym(x),symfun(w))
catch ME
ME.message
end
Looks like the only choice for dot with symfunmatrix is to write it by hand at the matrix level
x.'*w
or at the sym/symfun level
sym(x).'*symfun(w) % assuming x is real
Ideally, I'd like to see dot and cross implemented for symmatrix and symfunmatrix types where neither function would evaluate, i.e., expand, until both arguments are subs-ed with sym or symfun objects of appropriate dimension.
Also, it would be nice if symmatrix could be assumed to be real. Is there a reason why being able to do so wouldn't make sense?
try
assume(x,'real')
catch ME
ME.message
end
Excited to link and sync to be a part of better learning experience
happy to be here
Excited to link up
Share your learning starting trouble experience of Matlab.. Looking forward for more answers..
Hello everyone , i am excited to learn more!
Helllo all
I write The MATLAB Blog and have covered various enhancements to MATLAB's ODE capabilities over the last couple of years. Here are a few such posts
- The new solution framework for Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) in MATLAB R2023b
- Faster Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs) solvers and Sensitivity Analysis of Parameters: Introducing SUNDIALS support in MATLAB
- Solving Higher-Order ODEs in MATLAB
- Function handles are faster in MATLAB R2023a (Faster function handles led to faster ode45 and friends)
- Understanding Tolerances in Ordinary Differential Equation Solvers
Everyone in this community has deeply engaged with all of these posts and given me lots of ideas for future enhancements which I've dutifully added to our internal enhancment request database.
Because I've asked for so much in this area, I was recently asked if there's anything else we should consider in the area of ODEs. Since all my best ideas come from all of you, I'm asking here....
So. If you could ask for new and improved functionality for solving ODEs with MATLAB, what would it be and (ideally) why?
Cheers,
Mike
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15 votes
Something that I periodically wonder about is whether an integration with the Rubi integration rules package would improve symbolic integration in Matlab's Symbolic Toolbox. The project is open-source with an MIT-licensed, has a Mathematica implementation, and supposedly SymPy is working on an implementation. Much of my intrigue comes from this 2022 report that compared the previous version of Rubi (4.16.1) against various CAS systems, including Matlab 2021a (Mupad):
While not really an official metric for Rubi, this does "feel" similar to my experience computing symbolic integrals in Matlab Symbolic Toolbox vs Maple/Mathematica. What do y'all think?
Yesterday I had an urgent service call for MatLab tech support. The Mathworks technician on call, Ivy Ngyuen, helped fix the problem. She was very patient and I truly appreciate her efforts, which resolved the issue. Thank you.
Hi. I'm interested to learn more about MATLAB.
excited to learn more on Mathworks
Looking forward to the Expo!
Check out how these charts were made with polar axes in the Graphics and App Building blog's latest article "Polar plots with patches and surface".
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