## ASSIGN Making assignments

Section: Array Generation and Manipulations

### Usage

FreeMat assignments take a number of different forms, depending on the type of the variable you want to make an assignment to. For numerical arrays and strings, the form of an assignment is either

      a(ndx) = val

where `ndx` is a set of vector indexing coordinates. This means that the values `ndx` takes reference the elements of `a` in column order. So, if, for example `a` is an `N x M` matrix, the first column has vector indices `1,2,...,N`, and the second column has indices `N+1,N+2,...,2N`, and so on. Alternately, you can use multi-dimensional indexing to make an assignment:

      a(ndx_1,ndx_2,..,ndx_m) = val

where each indexing expression `ndx_i` corresponds to the `i-th` dimension of `a`. In both cases, (vector or multi-dimensional indexing), the right hand side `val` must either be a scalar, an empty matrix, or of the same size as the indices. If `val` is an empty matrix, the assignment acts like a delete. Note that the type of `a` may be modified by the assignment. So, for example, assigning a `double` value to an element of a `float` array `a` will cause the array `a` to become `double`. For cell arrays, the above forms of assignment will still work, but only if `val` is also a cell array. If you want to assign the contents of a cell in a cell array, you must use one of the two following forms, either

      a{ndx} = val

or

      a{ndx_1,ndx_2,...,ndx_m} = val

which will modify the contents of the cell.