Data Access

MATLAB is an efficient platform for accessing data from files, other applications, databases, and external devices. You can read data from popular file formats, such as Microsoft Excel; ASCII text or binary files; image, sound, and video files; and scientific files, such as HDF and HDF5. Low-level binary file I/O functions let you work with data files in any format. Additional functions let you read data from Web pages and XML.

Analyzing and Accessing Data

Analyzing and Accessing DataMATLAB® supports the entire data analysis process, from acquiring data from external devices and databases, through preprocessing, visualization, and numerical analysis, to producing presentation-quality output.
Data AnalysisThe MATLAB product provides interactive tools and command-line functions for data analysis operations, including:
Interpolating and decimating
Extracting sections of data, scaling, and averaging
Thresholding and smoothing
Correlation, Fourier analysis, and filtering
1-D peak, valley, and zero finding
Basic statistics and curve fitting
Matrix analysis

The MATLAB® LanguageThe MATLAB® language supports the vector and matrix operations that are fundamental to engineering and scientific problems. It enables fast development and execution.With the MATLAB language, you can program and develop algorithms faster than with traditional languages because you do not need to perform low-level administrative tasks, such as declaring variables, specifying data types, and allocating memory. In many cases, MATLAB eliminates the need for ‘for’ loops. As a result, one line of MATLAB code can often replace several lines of C or C++ code.At the same time, MATLAB provides all the features of a traditional programming language, including arithmetic operators, flow control, data structures, data types, object-oriented programming (OOP), and debugging features.