In your cise account, you should create a directory, say cot4501 for the
semester.
You would run matlab in that directory, and save all .m files in that
directory as well.
To create this directory (only once at the beginning of the semester)
do the following:
/prompt/ mkdir cot4501
Thereafter, whenever you run matlab, first go into this directory, i.e, do: /prompt/ cd cot4501
Some of the homeworks will require you to include matlab routines provided
by the author of the text.
To automatically include these files everytime you run matlab,
you should download a ``startup'' file, startup.m from a
public directory as follows (you need to do this only once at the
beginning of the semester).
/prompt/ cd cot4501
/prompt/ cp /cise/class/cot4501fa00/startup.m startup.m
After the startup file is in place, it sets the paths appropriately so that everytime you open matlab in your cot4501 directory during the semester, matlab finds all of the author's .m files from the appropriate public directory.
You can also look at these mfiles here if you wish.