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Arithmetic Operations

Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, power, rounding

Arithmetic functions include operators for simple operations like addition and multiplication, as well as functions for common calculations like summation, moving sums, modulo operations, and rounding.

For more information, see Array vs. Matrix Operations.

Functions

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Addition

+Add numbers, append strings
sumSum of array elements
cumsumCumulative sum
movsumMoving sum

Subtraction

-Subtraction
diffDifferences and approximate derivatives

Multiplication

.*Multiplication
*Matrix multiplication
prodProduct of array elements
cumprodCumulative product
pagemtimesPage-wise matrix multiplication (Since R2020b)
tensorprodTensor products between two tensors (Since R2022a)

Division

./Right array division
.\Left array division
/Solve systems of linear equations xA = B for x
\Solve systems of linear equations Ax = B for x
pagemldividePage-wise left matrix divide (Since R2022a)
pagemrdividePage-wise right matrix divide (Since R2022a)

Powers

.^Element-wise power
^Matrix power

Transpose

.'Transpose vector or matrix
'Complex conjugate transpose
pagetransposePage-wise transpose (Since R2020b)
pagectransposePage-wise complex conjugate transpose (Since R2020b)

Array Sign

uminusUnary minus
uplusUnary plus
modRemainder after division (modulo operation)
remRemainder after division
idivideInteger division with rounding option
ceilRound toward positive infinity
fixRound toward zero
floorRound toward negative infinity
roundRound to nearest decimal or integer
bsxfunApply element-wise operation to two arrays with implicit expansion enabled

Topics

  • Array vs. Matrix Operations

    Matrix operations follow the rules of linear algebra, and array operations execute element by element operations and support multidimensional arrays. The period character (.) distinguishes the array operations from the matrix operations.

  • Compatible Array Sizes for Basic Operations

    Most binary operators and functions in MATLAB® support numeric arrays that have compatible sizes. Two inputs have compatible sizes if, for every dimension, the dimension sizes of the inputs are either the same or one of them is 1.

  • Operator Precedence

    Precedence rules determine the order in which MATLAB evaluates an expression.

  • Floating-Point Numbers

    MATLAB represents floating-point numbers in either double-precision or single-precision format. The default is double precision.

  • Integers

    MATLAB supports 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-byte storage for integer data. If you use the smallest integer type that accommodates your data, you can save memory and program execution time.