MATLAB: Do I get the error ‘Missing operator, comma, semicolon, or white space.’ when I do not have a space between elements of the matrix

commamacMATLABmatrixspacewhitewhitespace

Why do I get the error 'Missing operator, comma, semicolon, or white space.' when I do not have a space between elements of my matrix?
I have the following code:
a = 2;
b = 'string';
temp = [b '-' num2str(a) ':'num2str(a)]
If I run the code on MATLAB 6.5 (R13), I get the following error:
 ??? temp = [b '-' num2str(a) ':'num2str(a)]
                                 |
 Error: Missing operator, comma, semicolon, or white space.
This code runs without error in MATLAB 5.2 (R10) and MATLAB 5.3 (R11).

Best Answer

MATLAB 6.5 (R13) requires that whitespace, a comma, or a semicolon separate the elements of a matrix. This is a change from previous versions of MATLAB. Running the same code in MATLAB 6.0 (R12) will give the following warning:
 Warning: Future versions of MATLAB will require that whitespace, a comma,
 or a semicolon separate elements of a matrix. Please type
 "help matrix_element_separators" at the MATLAB prompt for more information.
Please add a space between elements in your matrix. For example:
a = 2;
b = 'string';
temp = [b '-' num2str(a) ':' num2str(a)]
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