Development Environment

Syntax Highlighting and Parentheses Matching

Some entries appear in different colors to help you better find elements, such as matching if/else statements, which is known as syntax highlighting. Additional features allow you to easily see the matched pair for a parenthesis or other delimiter.

The colors and parentheses matching options listed here are the defaults. You can change them using preferences. See Font & Colors Preferences for the Command Window, and Parentheses Matching Preferences.

• Type a string and it is colored purple. When you close the string, it becomes maroon.
• Type a keyword, such as the flow control function for, or a continuation (ellipsis ...), and it is colored blue. Lines you enter between the opening and closing flow control functions are indented.
• Double-click an opening or closing delimiter, a parenthesis ( ), bracket [ ], or brace { }. This selects the characters between the delimiter and its mate.
• Type a closing (or opening) delimiter, and the matching opening (or closing) delimiter is highlighted briefly.
• Type a mismatched closing (or opening) delimiter and a strikethrough character appears on the delimiter. For example

  

• Use an arrow key to move over an opening or closing delimiter. That delimiter and its matching closing or opening delimiter briefly appear underlined.
• Type a comment symbol, %, and what follows on the line appears in green. That information is treated by MATLAB as a comment.
• Type a system command, such as the ! (shell escape), and the line appears in gold.
• Errors appear in red.

  

Note that output does not appear with syntax highlighting, except for errors.

Entering Multiple Functions in a Line

Command Line Editing