Why does the HELP command display non-English characters to the command line, or why does the MATLAB Help Browser display non-English text?

If I type the following command at the MATLAB prompt:

help help

I obtain the following output:

   HELP   ƒRƒ}ƒ“ƒhƒ‰ƒCƒ“‚ɃeƒLƒXƒg‚ð•\Ž¦‚·‚éƒIƒ“ƒ‰ƒCƒ“ƒwƒ‹ƒv

   HELPŽ©?g‚Å‚Í?A‚·‚ׂĂ̎å—v‚ȃwƒ‹ƒvƒgƒsƒbƒN‚ð•\Ž¦‚µ‚Ü‚·?BŽå—v‚ÈŠeƒgƒsƒb

   ƒN‚Í?AMATLABPATH?ã‚̃fƒBƒŒƒNƒgƒŠ–¼‚É‘Š“–‚µ‚Ü‚·?B

I expected to receive the help text for the HELP function:

   HELP On-line help, display text at command line. 

   HELP, by itself, lists all primary help topics.  Each primary topic

   corresponds to a directory name on the MATLABPATH.

Alternately, I see a similar effect if I attempt to look at the documentation in the Help Browser:

doc help

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The strange characters that appear in the Command Window when you use the HELP function is due to one of the directories containing Japanese help text being present on your MATLAB path and your system not being configured correctly to display the Japanese characters.

To correct this problem:

1. Open the MATLAB Path Browser using the PATHTOOL command or the "File -> Set Path" menu option.

2. Search your MATLAB path for any directory ending in "ja".

An example of a directory like this is $MATLABROOT\toolbox\matlab\general\ja, where $MATLABROOT is your MATLAB root directory.

3. Remove these directories from your MATLAB path and save the path.

The strange characters that appear in the Help Browser are a result of the documentation path preference being set to the directory containing the Japanese documentation. The "documentation location" option in the Help preferences, which you can access by opening the Preferences dialog using the "File -> Preferences" menu, should not be set to the $MATLABROOT\jhelp directory, but should instead be set to the $MATLABROOT\help directory, where $MATLABROOT is your MATLAB root directory.

You should also verify that the root property "Language" is set to "english". To set this property, execute the following command at the MATLAB prompt:

set(0, 'Language', 'english')