Section: Elementary Functions
y=diff(x) y=diff(x,k) y=diff(x,k,dim)
 Produce difference of successive vector elements.
 
 If x is a vector of length n, diff (x) is the
 vector of first differences
 \[
  [x_2 - x_1, ..., x_n - x_{n-1}].
 \]
 If x is a matrix, diff (x) is the matrix of column
 differences along the first non-singleton dimension.
 The second argument is optional.  If supplied, diff (x,k),
 where k is a nonnegative integer, returns the
 k-th differences. It is possible that k is larger than
 then first non-singleton dimension of the matrix. In this case,
 diff continues to take the differences along the next
 non-singleton dimension.
 The dimension along which to take the difference can be explicitly
 stated with the optional variable dim. In this case the 
 k-th order differences are calculated along this dimension.
 In the case where k exceeds size (x, dim)
 then an empty matrix is returned.