Page 23 - A Guide to MATLAB for Beginners and Experienced Users

4 Chapter 1: Getting Started

Figure 1-1: A MATLAB Desktop.

outline form to solid, or from light to dark, or it may simply appear. Now you
can begin entering commands. Try typing 1+1; then press ENTER or RETURN.
Next try factor(123456789), and finally sin(10). Your MATLAB Desktop
should look like Figure 1-2.

Online Help

MATLAB has an extensive online help mechanism. In fact, using only this
book and the online help, you should be able to become quite proficient with
MATLAB.
You can access the online help in one of several ways. Typing help at the
command prompt will reveal a long list of topics on which help is available. Just
to illustrate, try typing help general. Now you see a long list of “general
purpose” MATLAB commands. Finally, try help solve to learn about the
command solve. In every instance above, more information than your screen
can hold will scroll by. See the Online Help section in Chapter 2 for instructions
to deal withthis.
There is a much more user-friendly way to access the online help, namely via
the MATLAB Help Browser. You can activate it in several ways; for example,
typing either helpwin or helpdesk at the command prompt brings it up.