I'm starting to use functions handles in Matlab and I have a question, what Matlab computes when I do:
y = (0:.1:1)';
fun = @(x) x(1) + x(2).^2 + exp(x(3)*y)
and what Matlab computes when I do:
fun = @(x) x + x.^2 + exp(x*y)
Because I'm evaluating the Jacobian of these functions (from this code ) and it gives different results. I don't understand the difference of putting x(i) or only x
Let's define a vector vec as vec = [1, 2, 3].
When you use this vec in your first function as results = fun(vec), the program will take only the particular elements of the vector, meaning x(1) = vec(1), x(2) = vec(2) and x(3) = vec(3). The whole expression then will look as
results = vec(1) + vec(2).^2 + exp(vec(3)*y)
or better
results = 1 + 2^2 + exp(3*y)
However, when you use your second expression as results = fun(vec), it will use the entire vector vec in all the cases like this
results = vec + vec.^2 + exp(vec*y)
or better
results = [1, 2, 3] + [1^2, 2^2, 3^2] + exp([1, 2, 3]*y)
You can also clearly see that in the first case, I don't really need to care about matrix dimensions, and the final dimensions of the results variable are the same as the dimensions of your y variable. This is not the case in the second example, because you multiply matrices vec and y, which (in this particular example) results in error, as the vec variable has dimensions 1x3 and the y variable 11x1.