a = [-8.73 -12.77 0.49 -0.97 0.78 0.48 0.50 0.26]; in matlab

You can define a as follows in MATLAB:

main.m
a = [-8.73, -12.77, 0.49, -0.97, 0.78, 0.48, 0.50, 0.26];
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This creates a one-dimensional array/vector a with 8 elements.