# MATLAB Programming/GNU Octave

[MATLAB Programming\|/MATLAB Programming]m]
Chapter 1: MATLAB ._.
    Fundamentals of MATLAB
    MATLAB Workspace
    MATLAB Variables
    *.mat files
Chapter 2: MATLAB Concepts
    MATLAB operator
    Data File I/O
Chapter 3: Variable Manipulation
    Numbers and Booleans
    Strings
    Portable Functions
    Complex Numbers
Chapter 4: Vector and matrices
    Vector and Matrices
    Special Matrices
    Operation on Vectors
    Operation on Matrices
    Sparse Matrices
Chapter 5: Array
    Arrays
    Introduction to array operations
    Vectors and Basic Vector Operations
    Mathematics with Vectors and Matrices
    Struct Arrays
    Cell Arrays
Chapter 6: Graphical Plotting
    Basic Graphics Commands
    Plot
    Polar Plot
    Semilogx or Semilogy
    Loglog
    Bode Plot
    Nichols Plot
    Nyquist Plot
Chapter 7: M File Programming
    Scripts
    Comments
    The Input Function
    Control Flow
    Loops and Branches
    Error Messages
    Debugging M Files
Chapter 8: Advanced Topics
    Numerical Manipulation
    Advanced File I/O
    Object Oriented Programming
    Applications and Examples
    Toolboxes and Extensions
Chapter 9: Bonus chapters
    MATLAB Benefits and Caveats
    Alternatives to MATLAB
    [MATLAB_Programming/GNU_Octave|What is Octave= (8) hsrmonic functions]
    Octave/MATLAB differences
Octave is a free computer program for performing numerical computations (created as part of the GNU project) which is mostly compatible with MATLAB.

## History

The project was conceived around 1988. At first it was intended to be a companion to a chemical reactor design course. Real development was started by John W. Eaton in 1992. The first alpha release dates back to January 4, 1993 and on February 17, 1994 version 1.0 was released.
The name has nothing to do with music. It was the name of a former professor of one of the authors of Octave who was known for his ability to quickly come up with good approximations to numerical problems.

## Technical details

* Octave is written in C++ using STL libraries.
* Octave has an interpreter that interprets the Octave language.
* Octave itself is extensible using dynamically loadable modules.
* Octave interpreter works in tandem with gnuplot and Grace software to create plots, graphs, and charts, and to save or print them.

## Octave, the language

The Octave language is an interpreted programming language. It is a structured programming language (an example of which is the C language) and supports many common C standard library constructs, and can be extended to support UNIX system calls and functions. However, it does not support passing arguments by reference.
Octave programs consist of a list of function calls or script. The language is matrix-based and provides various functions for matrix operation. It is not object-oriented, but supports data structures.
Its syntax is very similar to MATLAB, and carefully programming a script will allow it to run on both Octave and MATLAB.
Because Octave is made available under the GNU General Public License, it may be freely copied and used. The program runs under most Unix and Unix-like operating systems, as well as Microsoft Windows.

## Notable features

* Command and variable name completion
Typing a TAB character on the command line causes Octave to attempt to complete variable, function, and file names. Octave uses the text before the cursor as the initial portion of the name to complete.
* Command history
When running interactively, Octave saves the commands typed in an internal buffer so that they can be recalled and edited.
* Data structures
Octave includes a limited amount of support for organizing data in structures. For instance:
* Short-circuit boolean operators
Octave's `&&' and `||' logical operators are evaluated in a short-circuit fashion (like the corresponding operators in the C language) and work differently than the element by element operators `&' and `|'.
* Increment and decrement operators
Octave includes the C-like increment and decrement operators `++' and `--' in both their prefix and postfix forms.
* Unwind-protect
Octave supports a limited form of exception handling modelled after the unwind-protect form of Lisp. The general form of an unwind_protect block looks like this:
* Variable-length argument lists
Octave has a real mechanism for handling functions that take an unspecified number of arguments without explicit upper limit.
Here is an example of a function that uses the new syntax to print a header followed by an unspecified number of values:
* Variable-length return lists
Octave also has a real mechanism for handling functions that return an unspecified number of values. For example:

## See also

* Octave Programming Tutorial

## References

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Octave