Where is startup.m supposed to be?

Question

I\'ve been chasing the answer to this question in the MATLAB documentation for a long time...

For example, at the bottom of

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/

Answer 1

As read in http://fr.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_env/matlab-startup-folder.html#buj_13n :

Changing the Startup Folder

Starting in R2014b, you can change the startup folder using the General Preferences panel. On the Home tab, in the Environment section, click Preferences. Select MATLAB > General. Choose an option for the Initial working folder.

By default, the initial working folder is set to Location based on MATLAB startup rules.

I wish it did not involve the graphical desktop interface, though. By looking closely in the file matlab.setting, which under Linux should lie in ~/.matlab//, you can find the lines

    
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where you can certainly specify manually the startup directory.