Creating an arbitary symbolic matrix in Matlab

[EbolaPox]

Homework Statement

Hi everyone, I'm new to using MATLAB and had a quick question. I'm trying to write a function such that my input into it is a number, say n, and it produces an n by n matrix with symbolic variables with names of the form aij , where i and j are numbers that refer to its row and column positions. This didn't seem like it would be too terribly tough, but I'm not sure how to make give my matrix these variable names of the form aij. I figured I could write a loop of some form that went from 0 to n and gave each an a1n or something of that form name, just to get at least one row, but I'm not too sure what syntax to use to give the symbolic variable its name. I was hoping I could write a loop with a variable i that ranged from 0 to n, and then do something like syms a'i' or something like that. I thought maybe if I turned the number i into a string, I could do something like that to make a bunch of symbolic variables, but I still had no luck. Any suggestions would be very appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Redbelly98]

I'm not familiar with Matlab. But wouldn't this involve two nested loops, no matter what programming language is used?

 

[Mene]

I would suggest using the "sym" function in MATLAB to create a symbolic matrix with arbitrary variables. This function allows you to specify the size of the matrix and the variable names. For example, you can use the following code:

A = sym('a',[n,n]);

This will create an n by n matrix with symbolic variables named aij, where i and j are the row and column indices. You can then use a loop to assign values to these variables if needed. I hope this helps with your task.