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Changes and New Features in matlab-emacs

New in 5.0

Syntax tables / Strings and Comments / Font lock

Command and String syntax handling is now managed using syntax-table customization

This results in:

  • More flavors of syntax highlighting around commands and strings, including all of:

    • strings, unterminated strings, commanddual strings
    • comments, cellbreak comments, pragma comments, ignored comments, ellipssis
  • Accurate differentiation between 'char arrays' and "strings" and quoted charts.
  • Performance improvements for comment/string parsing.

There is a new shorter 'ignore' comment type that starts with: %^

In addition, font lock of keywords is now more robust, with keywords not being highlighted when they are not being used in the correct scope.

Syntactic block navigation

With proper syntax table support now available, built-in emacs commands that depend on sexp now work, such as:

  • up-list
  • forward-sexp
  • kill-sexp
  • mark-sexp

In addition, commands that work with defuns now all work correctly, such as:

  • mark-defun
  • narrow-to-defun

All custom commands that used to implement these syntax behaviors have been removed, or had their bindings removed, including:

  • matlab-beginning-of-command
  • matlab-end-of-command
  • matlab-forward-sexp
  • matlab-backward-sexp
  • matlab-indent-sexp
  • matlab-beginning-of-defun
  • matlab-end-of-defn

In addition syntactic block navigation is faster, where very large files can now be navigated in fractions of a second that used to take a few minutes.

Support for block validation

Block navigation now does validation, for example, 'property' keywords should only occur inside a classdef, and 'arguments' keywords should only occur inside a function.

This means that you can now have variables and functions named 'property' and 'arguments' of those words occur outside valid locations.

Indentation

Indentation performance is greatly improved. Based on our tests, large files that used to take 10 minutes to indent will now complete in just 1 or 2 seconds.

Several new indentation features exist, such as:

  • correct indentation of arguemnts blocks
  • improved indentation of function argument lists that span multiple lines.
  • improved indentation around block comments
  • improved indentation accuracy in classdef, property, method blocks.
  • more accurate indentation of continuations

Some indentation features were removed, such as:

  • Max indent distance support inside function call args
  • Max indent distance support inside switch statements
  • Line-up rules inside ( ), [ ], and { } have changed subtly dependeing on context after the opening (, [, or {.

Specialty indentation commands have been removed:

  • matlab-indent-sexp

Electric indentation has been added to block keywords such as end, else, case, etc.

Lots of bug fixes and general improvements for handling edge cases.

matlab-return & friends removed

The 'matlab-return' and related functions have all been removed. Features of these commands are now part of Emacs' built in handling for RETURN and no longer need to be part of matlab mode.

File type detection

File type detection has been improved. Previously matlab mode detected if functions had ends, and if functions were indented. It now detects more cases, and displays results in the status line.

The list of detectable features are:

  • function (with no end)
  • function .. end
  • classdef .. end
  • scripts
  • empty files

Functions with ends also detect if function bodies are indented. Other kinds of functions will always indent.

The check for the type of file is also auto-re-detected on save, so if you change the type of file while editing, it will automatically adjust.

Auto verify changes

Auto verify on save has been updated.

  1. verify classname added - this will fix class names for you
  2. verify add ends - this now asks questions less often, or not at all. In addition, it has a more robust algorithm for adding ends.

mlint support questions

mlint mode now supports many more auto fix behaviors, including:

  • missing ends - with nicer guess for where the end goes.
  • function name - auto fix function, class, and method names.

Plus several minor bug fixes.

Support for older Emacsen

Support for Emacs older than Emacs 24 has been dropped. Many of the special compatability layers needed to change, and the new code has not been tested against older versions of Emacs. As a result, many compatability layers were removed.

Test suite improvements

The test suite that is part of matlab-emacs project has many more test points, and has added support for testing font lock, performance, and other features.

matlab-emacs maintenance mode

There is now a support file 'matlab-maint' that simplifies the task of building and testing matlab-mode during development. Consider using this library if you intend to develop matlab-mode.

News in 4.0

Debugging

Emacs debugging of MATLAB code is back!

M-x matlab-shell
>> dbstop in file.m

This is a significant improvement over the version that used to exist years ago. There are many improvements and fixes. Full debugging support is provided. You can debug MATLAB scripts, functions, packages, and classes. The debugger integration is using Emacs gud. You have the following capabilities when in a MATLAB M-file:

C-x C-a C-b    Set a breakpoint on current source line (dbstop)
C-x C-a C-d    Delete the breakpoint(s) on the current source line (dbclear)
C-x C-a C-s    Step a single line of code, stepping into functions (dbstep in)
C-x C-a C-n    Next a single line of code stepping over functions (dbstep)
C-x C-a <      Move up the next enclosing stack frame (dbup)
C-x C-a >      Move down the next inner stack frame (dbdown)
C-x C-a C-f    Finish, quit (dbquit)

matlab-shell: News

  1. matlab-shell editing of M-files now opens the M-file in Emacs without requiring setup.

    >> edit file.m

    will open file.m in your Emacs session. To do this, matlab-shell leverages the Emacs server mode to have MATLAB send the file to be edited to Emacs. matlab-shell will launch a unique server process for you if needed.

  2. In matlab-shell, errors are hyperlinked and left-mouse clickable (in addition to middle or RET clickable). Errors are also shown in an error font.
  3. In matlab-shell, RET on output lines (i.e. non-command lines) no longer causes lots of unnecessary noise.
  4. In matlab-shell, tab completion is much more responsive. matlab-shell is compatible with company-mode. If you have install company-mode, you will get tab completion pop-ups.
  5. In matlab-shell, "run cell" and "run region" capabilities are now executed in the base workspace.

Menu

  • The MATLAB menu for M-files is now always present. Prior, there would be cases where the menu disappears. The MATLAB menu also contains a new Debug sub-menu.

Performance

  • There are a number of performance improvements, meaning emacs is more responsive. For example, in matlab-shell, Emacs is more responsive when processing long output lines from MATLAB.

Bug fixes

  • There are a number of bug fixes.

Quotes

  • Single and double quote strings are now supported. MATLAB calls single-quote strings char array's and double quote strings are referred to as strings.

Prog mode

Matlab mode is now a derived mode, based on prog mode.

Support for older Emacsen

Support for Emacsen older than 20 has been removed. Xemacs supports has not touched, but has also not been tested, so it might be buggy. The current Matlab version has been successfully compiled with GNU emacs 24,25,26 and 27. There have been difficulties to compile it with Xemacs 21.4.X or 21.5.X, this issue is currently not resolved.

Loading

Faster load time by moving rarely used content into other files.

Completion

TAB completion in the shell was revamped (but should act mostly the same)