This page documents incompatibilities accross MATLAB versions. For each MATLAB release, it gives the main changes appearing in that release and that Dynare needs to handle.

Note that all changes are not documented, please refer to the official release notes for a full list: for releases up to 6.5.1 (R13SP1), and for releases since 7.0 (R14).

Dynare deals with these incompatibilities at three places:

• in the configure script, via the various m4 macros for MATLAB

• in the M-files, mainly through matlab/dynare_config.m

• in the C++ source for MEX files, mainly through dynmex.h, dynblas.h and dynlapack.h in mex/sources

MATLAB 7.10 (R2010a)

• the following functions are now deprecated (but still work): isstr, setstr, str2mat, strread, strvcat, textread. See http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/rn/br_bpq8-1.html#bsdnyvb-1 for their replacements

• in the output of the qr function, R now contains only real, nonnegative diagonal elements. Since the QR factorization is not unique, the answer is still correct. In previous releases, the diagonal of R could contain complex and negative elements.

• if you have a function, such as the following, that returns a struct array:

function structOut = getStruct
structOut = struct('fieldA', 5, 'fieldB', 10);

it is no longer valid to access fields of the structure by directly dot indexing the function's return value, as shown here:

getStruct.fieldA

Instead, you should first assign the returned structure to a variable, and then dot index the variable:

s = getStruct;
s.fieldA
ans =
     5

MATLAB 7.9 (R2009b)

• maxNumCompThreads now issues a warning, and will be removed in a future version

MATLAB 7.8 (R2009a)

• New command line option -singleCompThread for disabling automatic multithreading

• New function: quad2d

• Changed functions: conv, conv2, convn

• On 64-bit platforms, BLAS and LAPACK now internally use 64-bit integers

MATLAB 7.7 (R2008b)

• Changed functions: randn, randi

MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a)

• Multithreading enabled by default

• New functions: clearvars, memory, onCleanup

MATLAB 7.5 (R2007b)

• New functions: quadgk, bvp5c, maxNumCompThreads

• Changed functions: dmperm

• On 64-bit platforms, MATLAB arrays are no longer limited to 2³¹ elements. The limit in MATLAB 7.5 is 2⁴⁸-1.

• BLAS and LAPACK now in separate DLLs

MATLAB 7.4 (R2007a)

• New functions: bsxfun, ilu, assert, ismac, verLessThan

• Changed functions: rand, dir

• Divide By Zero and Log Of Zero Warnings Off By Default

• Multithreading implemented, but not activated by default (but function maxNumCompThreads not yet implemented)

• Introduction of MATLAB for Macintosh (Intel)
• Default MEX extension changed for Macintosh (PowerPC)

MATLAB 7.3 (R2006b)

• New functions: amd, bvpxtend, ldl

• Changed functions: lu, chol, unique

• In MEX files, the following types are introduced:

  • mwSize: represents size values, such as array dimensions and number of elements

  • mwIndex: represents index values, such as indices into arrays

  On 32-bit machines, these types are simply aliases for int.

  On 64-bit machines, it depends on whether one gives the -largeArrayDims for the MEX command:

  • without -largeArrayDims, these types are int (and therefore 32 bits)

  • with -largeArrayDims, these types are size_t, which is an alias for unsigned long (and therefore 64 bits); this option is mandatory when using sparse arrays

  On 64-bit machines, it is therefore necessary to recompile MEX files which use sparse arrays.

MATLAB 7.2 (R2006a)

• New function: idivide

• On Linux, MATLAB now built with gcc 3.4: MEX files need to be rebuilt
• Introduction of MATLAB for Windows 64-bit

MATLAB 7.1 (R14SP3)

• New functions: hypot, mode, arrayfun, exifread, structfun, swapbytes, typecast

• Modified functions: accumarray, odeset, rand, svd, cellfun, datestr, error, isfield, lasterror, rethrow, who, whos

• On Windows, the MEX command supports -l and -L options

• On Windows, .mexw32 is now the default extension for MEX files (instead of .dll)

• New mexext shell script to recover the MEX extension in Makefiles

• The import libraries for the MATLAB DLL files have been moved up a directory level and are no longer specific to the compiler version. The new location for these files is: $matlab/extern/lib/$arch/$vendor

MATLAB 7.0.4 (R14SP2)

MATLAB 7.0.1 (R14SP1)

• New function: ordeig

• Under Windows, this release cannot be used to compile the MEX files (BLAS/LAPACK developer libraries missing)

MATLAB 7.0 (R14)

• New format (v7) for MAT files

• Inf and NaN accept dimension arguments for creating matrices

• eps accepts an argument for computing relative precision

• New functions: addtodate, genvarname, intmax, intmin, intwarning, isfloat, isinteger, isscalar, isstrprop, isvector, mmfileinfo, recycle, restoredefaultpath, strtrim, textscan, xlswrite

• Changed functions: xlsread, dlmwrite, xlsinfo

• Added nested functions

• Functions handles can be called directly without feval

• On Linux and Macintosh systems, all MEX-files that can throw errors need to be recompiled
• Shared libraries previously residing in directory $MATLAB/extern/lib/$ARCH are now in $MATLAB/bin/$ARCH

MATLAB 6.5.2 (R13SP2)

MATLAB 6.5.1 (R13SP1)

MATLAB 6.5 (R13)

• First MATLAB release supported by Dynare.

• New functions: rmdir, movefile. Changed functions: mkdir, copyfile

• Left and right divide operators behave differently for singular matrices

• New function: regexp

• Possibility of using dynamic field names in structures (with the S.(field) syntax)

• New logical and/or operators with short-circuiting: && and ||

• Added a second output argument to ismember