GNU Octave

GNU Octave is a free-as-in-freedom mathematical software package and a programming language, with considerable compatibility with MATLAB, a proprietary package. This page complements Wikipedia and Wikibooks. It should help readers who want to learn GNU Octave rather than just read about it. For a start, the page collects links to learning materials outside of Wikiversity.

Getting started

To get started, one can use octave-online.net, avoiding the need to install Octave. Using that environment, one can peruse Using Octave from octave.org, try the examples and modify them. One can then move to the Octave Programming Tutorial in Wikibooks and solve the exercises that it has.

A quick glance, to be expanded:

• sin(3)
  • Evaluates an expression and outputs the result.
• x = 0:0.1:7; plot (x, sin (x));
  • Plots sine function on the given range, with the given step of 0.1.
• plot(x, sin(x), x, cos(x))
  • Building on the above, plots multiple functions.
• m = [1, 1, 2; 3, 5, 8; 13, 21, 34]
  • Creates a matrix.

Links:

• Try Octave online, octave-online.net

Compatibility with MATLAB

As per octave.org, "The Octave syntax is largely compatible with Matlab." Moreover, differences between Octave and MATLAB are usually considered to be bugs.

Links:

• GNU Octave#MATLAB compatibility, wikipedia.org

Further reading

Wikipedia and Wikibooks:

• GNU Octave, wikipedia.org
• Octave Programming Tutorial, wikibooks.org

Official pages and documentation from octave.org:

• GNU Octave, octave.org
• Octave, wiki.octave.org -- has links to different kinds of Octave documentation
• Using Octave, wiki.octave.org -- a quick introduction
• Octave Basics, wiki.octave.org -- something like a reference card
• Top (GNU Octave (version 8.4.0)), docs.octave.org -- the complete documentation

YouTube:

• GNU Octave - Full Tutorial For Beginners, MCC Py Tutorials, youtube.com
• Octave/MATLAB® for Beginners, Part 1: Starting from Scratch, MIT OpenCourseWare, youtube.com

Other:

• Try Octave online, octave-online.net
• CUED - Introduction to Octave, www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk -- a single-page introduction with about 15 000 words
• Learn MATLAB in Y Minutes, learnxinyminutes.com -- although for MATLAB, will work to a considerable extent for Octave