1) Ordinarily, each MATLAB function, defined by an M-file, has its own local variables, which are separate from those of other functions, and from those of the base workspace. However, if several functions, and possibly the base workspace, all declare a particular name as global, they all share a single copy of that variable. Any assignment to that variable, in any function, is available to all the functions declaring it global.
2) If the global variable does not exist the first time you issue the global statement, it is initialized to the empty matrix.
3) If a variable with the same name as the global variable already exists in the current workspace, MATLAB issues a warning and changes the value of that variable to match the global.
It will be clear with the following example,
Example : Here is the code for the functions tic and toc (some comments abridged). These functions manipulate a stopwatch-like timer. The global variable TICTOC is shared by the two functions, but it is invisible in the base workspace or in any other functions that do not declare it.
function tic
% TIC Start a stopwatch timer.
% TIC; any stuff; TOC
% prints the time required.
% See also: TOC, CLOCK.
global TICTOC
TICTOC = clock;
function t = toc
% TOC Read the stopwatch timer.
% TOC prints the elapsed time since TIC was used.
% t = TOC; saves elapsed time in t, does not print.
% See also: TIC, ETIME.
global TICTOC
if nargout < 1
elapsed_time = etime(clock,TICTOC)
else
t = etime(clock,TICTOC);
end
