MatLab Logical answer always 1

I have 2017b installed on my mac. Below is the confusing part:.....

>> islogical(5<7)

ans =

logical

   1

>> islogical(5>7)

ans =

logical

   1

[Stephen23]

The MATLAB documentation for islogical states clearly that " tf = islogical(A) returns true if A is a logical array and false otherwise" (emphasis added). It does not state anywhere on the page that islogical tests what the value of the logical array is.

Lets try it. Both true and false are scalar logical arrays, so we would expect them both to return true if we test if they are logical arrays:

>> islogical(true)
ans = 1
>> islogical(false)
ans = 1
>>

So no surprises there: a logical array is a logical array.

Answer 1

[Cedric Wannaz]

Yes, all these tests (relational operators) return a logical, which is a value that is true (1) or false (0).

But:

 >> 5 < 7     % Returns true (symbolized by 1).
 ans =
  logical
   1

 >> 5 > 7     % Returns false (symbolized by 0).
 ans =
  logical
   0

[Matlab_Student]

That I know. I don't understand why MatLab is not returning 0 when 5>7

[Walter Roberson]

islogical() tests whether the datatype of the expression matches "logical"

For example,

islogical(uint8(1))

would be false because data of type uint8 is not type logical.

[Cedric Wannaz]

As Walter is pointing out, ISLOGICAL is a test of class/type, like ISCHAR for characters. And the class of what is "returned" by a test invovling logical operator is "logical".

 >> class(5<7)
 ans =
  logical

Of course 5<7 has a value (here true), but this value has a class like all other types of data in MATLAB.

So ISLOGICAL is not "isTrue" (which doesn't exist by the way .. it would return true when true and false otherwise ;)).

[Jan]

In other words: islogical(x) is equivalent to:

strcmp(class(x), 'logical')

or

isa(x, 'logical')

Remark: isa() is surprisinlgy slow: it needs about 4 times longer than the strcmp method.