What is the difference between .m and .mat files in MATLAB

Question

When I traced my reference MATLAB script, I found files with the .mat extension. My questions are:

1. What is the difference between .mat and .m files?
2. How does one open files with the .mat extension?

Answer 1

Files with a .m extension contain MATLAB code, either in the form of a script or a function.

Files with a .mat extension contain MATLAB formatted data, and data can be loaded from or written to these files using the functions LOAD and SAVE.