Both programs offer convenient visualization of data through two and three dimensional plotting functions. Now I will attempt to point out the technical differences between the two programs. The Matlab language supports one data type, the matrix. The matrix is also used to represent vectors of characters, and matrices of characters. Matlab versions 4.x added a sparse matrix.
Any numerical matrix can be either real or complex.
RLaB offers more than the matrix as a data type. However, the matrix is probably the most often used data structure. Like Matlab, RLaB's matrices are used to represent scalars, vectors, and matrices, both real and complex. At this point in time RLaBdoes not offer a sparse matrix. In addition to the matrix, RLaB has a string class, and data type.