% symbol at the start of a line

Hello, What does the '%' symbol do when put at the start of a line in the programme? Thank you.

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

That turns the line into a comment. It is no longer used as code. A % can also appear later in the line.

When something is seen as a comment by MATLAB, the editor will display that part in green.

Finally, you can create a block comment, thus a block of lines that start with %{ and and with %} will now be seen as if they were all commented individually. (This capability was introduced into MATLAB some years ago, though I am not certain in which release that occurred.)

Some examples:

a = 5;  % only the latter part of this line is a comment

% this next is just a comment, so not executable code
% a = 5;

%{
A block comment
aefgeqg
qethqt
qethq
%}

% a % symbol in quotes does not create a comment
% so anything that is part of a string is thus not a comment
sprintf('%0.5f',1/3)
ans =
    '0.33333'

'% sefgetgqeqaghqthth'

[SL: typo fix]

[Isobel Munden]

Thank you very much!