What's the difference between {} and [] in MATLAB?

Question

>> A={1 2;2 3}

A = 

    [1]    [2]
    [2]    [3]
>> A=[1 2;2 3]

A =

     1     2
     2     3

It seems to me they are essentially

Answer 1

[] is an array-related operator. An array can be of any type - array of numbers, char array (string), struct array or cell array. All elements in an array must be of the same type!

Example: [1,2,3,4]

{} is a type. Imagine you want to put items of different type into an array - a number and a string. This is possible with a trick - first put each item into a container {} and then make an array with these containers - cell array.

Example: [{1},{'Hallo'}] with shorthand notation {1, 'Hallo'}

It is unnecessary to put objects of the same type (doubles) into a cell array like in your example.