LabMate: A prospectus for types for MATLAB
Conor Thomas McBride, Georgi Nakov, Fredrik Nordvall Forsberg, Andre Videla, Alistair Forbes, Keith Lines · Measurement Sensors · 2025
Many computations in science and engineering are implemented in the programming language MATLAB. However the high-level meaning of such MATLAB programs stays informal, which can lead to implementation errors and bugs, for example relating to incompatible units of measure for quantities, or incompatible sizes of matrices at runtime. We are in the process of developing LabMate, which is a tool for reifying current informal programmer practices into a language of formal comments. These comments are ignored by MATLAB, but acted on and checked by LabMate. We outline the design principles behind LabMate, our current progress, and our future plans.