matfile_format

  This document describes the internal format of MATLAB ® Version 5 and Version 4 MAT-files. A MAT-file stores data in binary (not human-readable) form. In MATLAB, you create MAT-files by using the save command, which writes the arrays currently in memory to a file as a continuous byte stream. By convention, this file has the filename extension .mat thus the name MAT-file. The load command reads the arrays from a MAT-file into the MATLAB workspace.