5
Introduction
Advice on writing MATLAB code usually addresses efficiency
concerns, with recommendations such as “Don’t use loops.” This
document is different. Its concerns are correctness, clarity and
generality. The goal of these guidelines is to help produce code
that is more likely to be correct, understandable, sharable and
maintainable.
Some ways of coding are better than others. It’s as simple as that.
Coding conventions add value by helping to make mistakes
obvious. As Brian Kernighan writes, “Well-written programs are
better than badly-written ones -- they have fewer errors and are
easier to debug and to modify -- so it is important to think about
style from the beginning.”
When people look at your code, will they see what you are
doing? The spirit of this book can be pithily expressed as “Avoid
write-only code.”
This document lists MATLAB coding recommendations
consistent with best practices in the software development
community. These guidelines are generally the same as those for
C, C++ and Java, with modifications for MATLAB features and
history. The recommendations are based on guidelines for other
languages collected from a number of sources and on personal
experience. These guidelines are written with MATLAB in mind,
and they should also be useful for related languages such as
Octave, Scilab and O-Matrix.
Issues of style are becoming increasingly important as the
MATLAB language changes and its use becomes more
widespread. In the early versions, all variables were double
precision matrices; now many data types are available. Usage
has grown from small scale prototype code to large and complex
