Spacing in defining complex numbers?

I just spent a while puzzling over a problem until it dawned on me:

a1 = [3.98994e-05 +1i*-0, 4.21732e-05 +1i*3.69849e-05];

Computes to :

   1.0e-04 *

   0.3990 + 0.0000i   0.0000 + 0.0000i   0.4217 + 0.0000i   0.0000 + 0.3698i

To get what I expected, I had to do the following (strip spaces):

[3.98994e-05+1i*-0, 4.21732e-05+1i*3.69849e-05]

1.0e-04 *

   0.3990 + 0.0000i   0.4217 + 0.3698i

I am debugging a large vector written from C code, so my hunch was to spend quite some time looking for bugs in C-code before starting to look at the numerical interpretation in MATLAB.

-k

Answer 1

[KSSV]

You can try braces instead of space..

a1 = [(3.98994e-05 +1i*-0), (4.21732e-05 +1i*3.69849e-05)];

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

The whole reason for this is that you're not consistent with your spacing around the operators. Either put a space before and after the +, or none on either side. As it is, because of the space before and none after, the + is interpreted as the unary +.