How can I see for a function from which version was change functionality!

By example I use the latest vesrion 2021B and I had a problem with the "title" function for a plot. I checked the version from which version this function exist and in the helper page was described "title(titletext,subtitletext)", and I created plots with title and subtitle used this function, but for my colleagues who use 2020b or 2019 they had errors with this function, that have to much arguments. It is possible to see on the helper page if in a function some functionality of the functions is working just from the specified Matlab version, if not I think it would be very very usefull this information when it is included new functionality for older function to specify the version when this functionaly was introduced ???

Add title - MATLAB title - MathWorks United Kingdom

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

The subtitle option was added in Matlab R2020b so your colleagues who are using 20b should not have a problem.

R2020b Release Notes

New in r2020b: Subtitles & Title/Label Alignment

2020B Title documentation

Archived Documentation

I agree that it would be nice for the documentation to include release info about new features within the help pages. For example,

Alternatively, you can look up documentation in the archive for previous releases or search the release notes (links provided above).

[Barna Erdei]

Thank You for Your quick answer, I was wrong with the version, because they have the 2020a not b and because of this we had this problem.

And Yes I can search it and check the documentation page for every version what we are using, but if I made this for every function what we are using it could be a little bit time consuming!

Maybe they could update the documentation page based on the releases, because also every functionality is put on every tab and I think it would be helpfull to add a small tag from which verion si availabla those things.

Thank You againg for the answer!

[Jan]

Yes, the idea of adding a list of changes in the documentation, would be very usful. At least we find an "introduced in" at the bottom, but this does not specify changes. Searching in the release notes is to complicated.

[Adam Danz]

@Barna Erdei, when I am developing Matlab code that will be run by several people, I find out the earliest release used by the group and I develop the product using that release so I know it will work for everone. I realize this isn't possible for everyone and having multiple versions of Matlab installed takes a ton of space.

@All

What would really be nice is for Matlab's Dependency Report to include the minimum release required and to identify the lines of code that limit the minimum release.

I've also suggested that instead of storing archived documentation separately from the current documentation, it would be nice to be able to press a link to go directly from the current "title" function documentation page to R20XXx version of the "title" function page.

[Rik]

This is one of the very few major flaws in the Matlab documentation IMHO.

I try to make my code compatible with every Matlab release since R13 (v6.5) and every GNU Octave release since version 4. Octave is fairly stable when it comes to features of functions (either the function is there with all bells and whistles, or it is not implemented at all), but for Matlab it is generally a hunt through release notes to figure out when a feature was added. Some changes aren't even clearly documented there, although don't have an example on hand.

I generally write tester functions to check if my code has expected behavior over all releases. The release notes may no longer be online, but most can still be found in the offline documentation, so I can generally figure out which release introduced a feature, e.g. which release introduced mathematical operations for uint64 (R2010b) or when the 'second' option for addtodate was added (R2008b).

[Jan]

@Rik: My favourite examples for undocumented changes:

• fopen in VAX-D mode vanished in R2008b.
• strncmp(s1, s2, n) changed the result multiple times, if one of the strings is empty or if n=0.
• fid=fopen(File, 'w'), fwrite(fid, 'a') wrote an ASCII until R2021b and an UTF16 now.

[Adam Danz]

Last year the archived documentation and release notes became limited to -5 years which has made it difficult to troubleshoot in older releases without installing the older release.

I frequenly look up functions in the archives to see when a feature was added or changed but that requires manually referencing the function in each individual documentation release and comparing the results which is a pain.

And I often miss new exciting features and run into them 2-3 releases later even though I usually read the release notes after each new release. That motivates me to write Community Highlights to improve the discoverability of some new features but I've only managed to cover a small fraction of my shortlist.