Programming

Keywords

MATLAB reserves certain words for its own use as keywords of the language. To list the keywords, type

• iskeyword
  ans = 
      'break'
      'case'
      'catch'
      'continue'
      'else'
      'elseif'
      'end'
      'for'
      'function'
      'global'
      'if'
      'otherwise'
      'persistent'
      'return'
      'switch'
      'try'
      'while'
  

See the online function reference pages to learn how to use these keywords.

You should not use MATLAB keywords other than for their intended purpose. For example, a keyword should not be used as follows:

• while = 5;
  ??? while = 5;
            |
  Error: Expected a variable, function, or constant, found "=".
  

Lifetime of a Variable

Special Values

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