MATLAB: What is the difference between .’ and ‘ when transposing a matrix

Question

I am new to MatLab, and when I try to transpose a matrix , it seems that using .' and ' produce the same effect. For matrix a, for example, I can do

a.'
a'

and they produce the same result. Is there a difference between these two?

Answer 1

They produce the same result only for real values. The ‘regular’ transpose operator (') produces a complex-conjugate transpose for complex numbers. With the dot operator (.') it produces the transpose without performing the complex-conjugate operation.

Note: This is the only operation (that I am aware of) where the dot-operator does not signify element-wise operations, as it does with multiplication, division, and exponentiation.