Is there any other way to code (|n1| |n2|) in matlab..? i couldnot code this single vertical bars ..? it is very simple to look my question but am stuck here.. if i come to know this i will solve my problem...

Is there any other way to code (n1 |n2|) in matlab..? i could not code this single vertical bars ..? it is very simple to look my question but am stuck here.. if i come to know this i will solve my problem.

[Jan]

Note: Do not care about the confusing display in the forum: The bars are treated as special characters for inserting code in the text, but they do not work reliably. Some bars appear, some don't.

[dpb]

Huh. Never knew that...

[Jan]

@dpb: ;-) It drives me mad, that the forum cannot display characters correctly after all these years. Do you understand, why this:

(|n1| |n2|)

is display as (n1 n2) when it appears in the text? Inserting a space after the parenthesis helps: ( n1 n2 ) - now both are displayed wrong :-[ . HTML helps: (|n1| |n1|) . This is: |n1| Brrrr.

[Walter Roberson]

The | is treated as triggering monospace only if the | is not immediately preceded by a graphic character, and it is immediately followed by a graphic character, and the balancing | is not immediately followed by an alphanumeric character.

"not immediately preceded by a graphics character" meaning that it has to be preceded by whitespace or beginning of line.

"not immediately followed by an alphanumeric character" meaning that it has to be followed by whitespace or end of line or any of the special symbols, but not by the letters or digits.

The case of || is handled as a | followed by a graphics character (that is, can turn on monospace) rather than as | preceded by a graphics character.

In (n1 |n2|) the first | is preceded by a graphics character so it is treated literally. The second | is followed by whitespace so it is treated literally. The | before n2 is preceded by whitespace so it can trigger monospace. The ) after |n2| is followed by a non-alphanumeric is it is permitted to be the turn-off of monospace.

[dpb]

@Jan -- I've given TMW uncountable grief over the forum interface to the point I'm resigned they don't care... :( And, I suppose, they're right as long as we continue to come back and put up with it.

[Stephen23]

See http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/help/markup.

Answer 1

[dpb]

doc abs

Matlab uses | as a logical operator, not in pairs to indicate absolute value (which practice is consonant with virtually all other common programming languages). Use the abs function...

[Jan]

Except for fabs() in C.

+1, I assume this is a good guess. But perhaps "(|n1| |n2|)" means something else due to the parenthesis and the two arguments?

[Walter Roberson]

My thought is that there is an implicit multiplication happening there.

[dpb]

@Jan -- the consonance of which I was speaking was using a functional form for absolute value rather than paired punctuation, not the actual name for the function in any given language.

@ Walter -- possibly may be going along with it but the plaintive cry about the vertical bar made me think OP was trying to copy a math text expression into Matlab literally. If need to also multiply then that'd be required to be explicitly written, too, fur shure...