Modifying the matlabpath variable

Like UNIX, MATLAB has a search path. The environment variable PATH specifies the UNIX search path; MATLABPATH specifies the initial MATLAB search path. If you enter a name for MATLAB, for example bob, the MATLAB interpreter:

1. Looks for bob as a variable.
2. Checks for bob as a built-in function.
3. Looks in the current directory for a file named bob.m.
4. Searches the directories specified by the environment variable MATLABPATH for bob.m.

You can add a directory to MATLABPATH yourself. This allows you to organize your own libraries of M-files. For example, Bob has written his own set of M-files for analyzing geophysical data. He can maintain his library of M-files by putting them in a directory called /~bob/geo and adding this line to his startup file.

setenv MATLABPATH /~bob/geo/

MATLAB places this path ahead of its own MATLABPATH and responds in the normal way so you do not need to copy your M-files into every directory from which you might want to run MATLAB.