Identifying Legitimate MATLAB Variable Names

Which names in the following pairs are legitimate MATLAB variable names?

1) fred 2) fred! 3) book_1 4) book-1 5) 2ndplace 6) second_place

Answer:

Legitimate MATLAB variable names from the given options are 'fred', 'book_1', and 'second_place'.

In MATLAB, variable names must adhere to certain rules to be valid. They can consist of letters, numbers, and underscores, but they must begin with a letter and should not include special characters or spaces.

Let's evaluate the provided names:

• fred - Valid as it only contains letters and starts with one.
• fred! - Invalid because the exclamation mark (!) is a special character.
• book_1 - Valid as it contains letters, an underscore, and ends with a number.
• book-1 - Invalid because the hyphen (-) is a disallowed character.
• 2ndplace - Invalid as it starts with a number.
• second_place - Valid because it follows the recommended naming convention of starting with a letter and using underscores to separate words.

To recap, the legitimate MATLAB variable names from the list above are 'fred', 'book_1', and 'second_place'.