ellipsis, ...

Line continuation

expand all in page

Syntax

...

Description

The ellipsis symbol (...) continues the current command on the next line. If three or more periods occur before the end of a line, then MATLAB® ignores the rest of the line and continues to the next line. This behavior effectively makes a comment out of anything on the current line that follows the three periods.

MATLAB interprets the ellipsis as a space character. Therefore, multi-line commands must be valid as a single line with the ellipsis replaced by a space character.

example

Examples

expand all

Open Live Script

Continue a function call on the next line.

vname = "Var1";
value = 10;
sprintf(["The current value " + ...
    "of %s is %d"],vname,value)
ans = 
"The current value of Var1 is 10"
Open Live Script

Break a character vector over multiple lines and concatenate the lines together.

S = ['If three or more periods occur before the ' ...
    'end of a line, then the rest of that line is ' ...
    'ignored and MATLAB continues to the next line'];
Open Live Script

To comment out one line in a multi-line command, use ... at the beginning of the line to ensure that the command remains complete. If you use % to comment out a line, the command produces an error.

y = 1 + ...
    2 + ...
  % 3 + ...
    4

However, this code runs properly because the third line does not produce a gap in the command.

y = 1 + ...
    2 + ...
... 3 +
    4
y = 
7

Version History

Introduced before R2006a

See Also

Topics