% with diary, everything that is typed in
% will go to the file, comments start with %
diary off % close the file
% we continue our diary..
% as a complement to diary, which just creates
% a text file, only suitable for reading,
% is the "save" command
a = rand(2,2)

a =

    0.9501    0.6068
    0.2311    0.4860

b = rand(2,1)

b =

    0.8913
    0.7621

% a and b define a linear system a*x = b,
% we solve it via the backslash operator:
x = a\b

x =

   -0.0912
    1.6115

% to check the quality of the solution,
% we compute the norm of the residual vector
r = b - a*x

r =

  1.0e-015 *

         0
    0.1110

format long
r

r =

  1.0e-015 *

                  0
   0.11102230246252

format long e
r

r =

                         0
    1.110223024625157e-016

% the default working with numbers is not
% the software driven arithmetic of Maple
% but standard double floating-point 
% Let us now try to save our work:
save matlec1data
% the file created by save is not meant
% to be read by the user, but is only meant
% to store the data for later use by MATLAB
who 

Your variables are:

a  b  r  x  

a

a =

  Column 1 

    9.501292851471754e-001
    2.311385135742878e-001

  Column 2 

    6.068425835417866e-001
    4.859824687092997e-001

% who lists the variables in use,
% typing just a name of a variable shows
% its value
clear
who
% we can recover the data via the load
load matlec1data
% the residual r computed via the norm
% measures the accuracy of the numerical solution
who

Your variables are:

a  b  r  x  

r

r =

     0

a

a =

  Column 1 

    8.162057091619634e-001
    9.770923548415121e-001

  Column 2 

    2.219080795405284e-001
    7.036836674057537e-001

format short e
a

a =

  8.1621e-001  2.2191e-001
  9.7709e-001  7.0368e-001

b

b =

  5.2206e-001
  9.3290e-001

x

x =

  4.4849e-001
  7.0298e-001

cd ..
% the save command creates a file of type
% "mat", automatically added as extension
% to the filename given as argument to save
% With a script, a file with extension .m
% we store the commands we want to execute.
diary off