Programming and Data Types

Flow Control

There are eight flow control statements in MATLAB:

• if, together with else and elseif, executes a group of statements based on some logical condition.
• switch, together with case and otherwise, executes different groups of statements depending on the value of some logical condition.
• while executes a group of statements an indefinite number of times, based on some logical condition.
• for executes a group of statements a fixed number of times.
• continue passes control to the next iteration of a for or while loop, skipping any remaining statements in the body of the loop.
• break terminates execution of a for or while loop.
• try...catch changes flow control if an error is detected during execution.
• return causes execution to return to the invoking function.

All flow constructs use end to indicate the end of the flow control block.

Note    You can often speed up the execution of MATLAB code by replacing for and while loops with vectorized code. See "Optimizing the Performance of MATLAB Code" on page 1-91.

Operator Precedence

if, else, and elseif