Effect of period after numeric value

I have the following code: 

a = magic(4);
a_divide = a./2.

b = 30.;

c = .0;

Do the periods before or after these values make a difference? 

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

These dot operators are different from the ones preceding mathematical operators which are used for element wise operations for matrices. This operator is used in the portion of code "a./2" but this is not necessary when dividing by a scalar. You can find more information about this operator at the following documentation:

times - Multiplication - MATLAB

The dot operators in the code you provided has no effect and will functionally be the same without it. You can verify this by using the 'isfloat' function on all of these like so: 

 

a = 1;
b = 1.;

isfloat(a)

isfloat(b)