On-line help

If you forget how to use a Matlab function, or what it does exactly, you can use the on-line help facility. At the matlab prompt try the following (one at a time):

 
help abs
help plot
help eig

To get fuller details you may need to consult the online Reference section of Matlab's Help Desk

Typing help on its own will print a complete list of the ``topics'' (e.g matlab/general). To list the functions within a topic, use help again (e.g help matlab/general). The list will include the so-called `built-in' functions which have been optimised and pre-compiled for efficiency, further functions which have themselves been written in the Matlab language (more on that shortly) and supplied as part of Matlab, and collections of Matlab functions which have been written for particular applications -- mostly for signal processing, time series analysis and control engineering. There are several hundred of them altogether.