error in syms line 56 WHY THIS ERROR ?

I just purchased and installed the Symbolic Toolbox but it does not seem to work. Why do I get this error? This is from an example from the Mathworks website.

syms s(t) f(x,y)

Error using assignin Invalid variable name "s(t)" in ASSIGNIN.

Error in syms (line 56) assignin('caller',varargin{i},sym(varargin{i}));

[Steven Lord]

Which release are you using? Does the documentation included in your installation list that as a valid syntax?

The ability to create symbolic functions was introduced in release R2012a.

[Walter Roberson]

"just purchased" -- it isn't possible to purchase R2011b or earlier anymore!

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You should use

which -all syms

to see where you are getting the syms function from. You should see toolbox/symbolic/symbolic/syms.m but somehow you have some other routine instead.

syms() does have some assignin('caller') calls, but none of them have the form you show in the error message, and none of them occur until after line 200 in the routine -- line 56 is still part of the help text.