Live Scripts

Live Scripts

Plain-text .m files that render as rich documents in the MATLAB Live Editor. Version-control friendly — never use binary .mlx.

When to Use

• Tutorials, reports, analysis notebooks, or documentation
• Interactive exploration with inline figures and equations
• Version-controlled content (plain-text .m, not binary .mlx)
• Converting an existing binary .mlx file to plain-text .m

When NOT to Use

• Regular scripts without rich formatting
• Function files
• MATLAB older than R2025a

Converting from .mlx

To convert a binary .mlx file to a plain-text .m live script, run the following at the MATLAB Command Window. The recipe is not part of the resulting .m file:

editor = matlab.desktop.editor.openDocument(mlxPath, Visible=0);
editor.saveAs(newMPath);  % use .m extension
editor.closeNoPrompt;

Rules

• Text lines use %[text] — NOT bare %
• One paragraph = one %[text] line — do not hard-wrap; let the Live Editor handle line width
• No empty %[text] lines — they render as unwanted blank space
• Section headers: %% on its own line, then %[text] ## Title on next line
• No blank lines in the file, except a single blank line directly before %[appendix]
• No figure command — implicit figure creation only
• No more than one plot per section (unless using tiled layouts)
• No close all or clear
• No mfilename — does not work as intended in live scripts. Hardcode filenames or use pwd.
• Escape these characters when used as literal text (not as markdown syntax): *, _, [, ], `, \. Also escape . after a digit and # at line start.
• Equations use single-$ inline form only: $ a = \\pi r^2 $ (no $$ ... $$). For a centered/display equation, wrap the line: %[text]{"align":"center"} $ X(k) = \\sum\_{n=0}^{N-1} x(n) e^{-j2\\pi kn/N} $