Talk:GNU Octave

message: 4.0.2. since 2016-04-21  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.67.31.234 (talk) 20:35, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Version

message: Does anyone know for sure if the person Octave is named after is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octave_Levenspiel ?
  I think so.  Prof Octave Levenspiel is a famous expert in Chemical Reaction Engineering and had written a well-know book on it.
  All of these info is in accord with the message about naming in Octave's manual:
    
    Virtually everyone thinks that the name Octave has something to do with music, but it is actually the name of a former
    professor of mine who wrote a famous textbook on chemical reaction engineering, and who was also well known for his ability
    to do quick `back of the envelope' calculations. We hope that this software will make it possible for many people to do more
    ambitious computations just as easily.
         
         See http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Preface.html#Preface.  --realwhz  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Realwhz (talk • contribs) 18:05, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Naming

message: Could someone please expand this article with more details about its relation with matlab? Thanks
70.93.249.46 07:15, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Octave is quite far behind matlab even on basic things. If you start digging into the toolboxes it's just not there in octave, doing the graphics is also not comparable. All in all, octave will do nicely as a simple calculator and for some scripts especially adapted for it (if for example you need to distribute something w/o paying license fees. It would probably be constructive for octave to do a proper graphical implementation and try to have basic implementations of the toolbox features, so that at least it can work as a decent stand-alone matlab clone.--Godal (talk) 23:21, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

text: Actually, like other MATLAB clones such as Sysquake and O-Matrix, Octave trails behind. Features like objects (MATLAB 5) and anonymous functions (MATLAB 7) aren't implemented yet. But as the article says, at least for mathematics, it's easy to develop code compatible with both. Engelec 15:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comparison with MatLab

message: Wouldn't an actual screenshot be more informative than just some random graph?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.162.50.110 (talk) 16:58, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Screenshots of command line programs tend to be boring.  There don't seem to be any screenshots on the octave website & the article about gnuplot doesn't show a screenshot.  There are various frontends to Octave, but I don't know if there's a reason to pick a particular one for a screenshot unless that frontend is particularly notable. --19:29, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Screenshot

message: In the Octave documentation it says that the method for variable-length return lists is function [...]=f, using the ellipsis.  Is this no longer used?  It certainly didn't seem to run for me.  On the other hand, although I could run the code given in the text, it wasn't clear to me how to access the return list after the code was run?  I must be a bit dense, but perhaps that would be a useful clarification? Grj23 (talk) 22:27, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Variable-length Return Lists

message: There is some general cleanup and citing needed for this page. I will be working on it for a little while.
~nat1192 (talk) 20:20, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: The article should discuss the speed, as compared to e.g. MATLAB. In various discussion forums, Octave seems to be 8-20 times as slow as MATLAB, especially if the code is iterative rather than vectorized. But we need better sources. Mange01 (talk) 08:42, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Speed comparison? 

message: I currently can't retrieve the referenced URL http://qtoctave.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/qtoctave-end directly directly or via the WayBack Machine. --Gryllida 00:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  QtOctave development end 

message: The "Octave, the language" section says, "It is a structured programming language (similar to C) and supports many common C standard library functions, and also certain UNIX system calls and functions.[4] However, it does not support passing arguments by reference.[5]"
From what I understand, C also does not "support passing arguments by reference."  I know C has pointers, and I used to think this meant it did support passing arguments by reference, but it doesn't.  Pointers are values that just happen to point to memory locations; they are passed by value just like any other value.  Truly "passing arguments by reference" would mean the subprocedure would be able to modify the caller's copy of the actual pointer itself, not just whatever happens to be located in memory where it points.  C++ has a true call-by-reference feature, but ANSI C (at least) does not.
This is what I've learned (the hard way, in arguments with others).  But I don't have a citation handy to back it up, so can anybody else find one?  --BlueGuy213 (talk) 09:40, 12 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  C does not have reference arguments either