MATLAB is a modern programming language and problem solving environment: it has sophisticated data structures, contains built-in editing and debugging tools, and supports object-oriented programming. These factors make MATLAB an excellent language for teaching and a powerful tool for research and practical problem solving. Being interpreted, MATLAB inevitably suffers some loss of efficiency compared with compiled languages, but built-in performance acceleration techniques reduce the inefficiencies and users have the possibility of linking to compiled Fortran or C code using MEX files.
This book has two purposes. First, it aims to give a lively introduction to the most popular features of MATLAB, covering all that most users will ever need to know.
The second purpose of the book is to provide a compact reference for all MATLAB users.
