MATLAB: Does the SYM function operate differently in Symbolic Math Toolbox 5.3 (R2009b) compared to earlier releases

findsymsymSymbolic Math Toolboxsymvar

I am using syntax such as the following
syms a b c
mymatrix = [a,b,c,1,2,3];
mysyms = findsym(mymatrix);
mynewsym = sym(mysyms)
Using Symbolic Math Toolbox 5.2 (R2009a) and earlier, this returned a 1×3 matrix of sym objects. However, using Symbolic Math Toolbox 5.3 (R2009b), this returns a single 1×1 sym object.

Best Answer

This change has been incorporated into the documentation in Release 2010a (R2010a). For previous releases, read below for any additional information:
The SYM function was changed in release R2009b to improve performance and simplify the user model. As a result, the syntax
sym('a,b,c')
now returns a 1x1 sym object. In previous releases, this syntax returned a 1x3 matrix of sym objects. This is because MuPAD now interprets 'a,b,c' as a sequence instead of a list of variables.
To resolve this issue, replace
mysyms = findsym(mymatrix);
mynewsym = sym(mysyms)
with
mynewsym = symvar(mymatrix)
The SYMVAR function is faster than the combination of SYM and FINDSYM and returns a 1x3 matrix of sym objects.
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