Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements
How You Can Contribute to Octave
Distribution

1. A Brief Introduction to Octave

1.1 Running Octave
1.2 Simple Examples

Creating a Matrix
Matrix Arithmetic
Solving Linear Equations
Integrating Differential Equations
Producing Graphical Output
Editing What You Have Typed
Help and Documentation

1.3 Conventions

1.3.1 Fonts
1.3.2 Evaluation Notation
1.3.3 Printing Notation
1.3.4 Error Messages
1.3.5 Format of Descriptions

1.3.5.1 A Sample Function Description
1.3.5.2 A Sample Command Description
1.3.5.3 A Sample Variable Description

2. Getting Started

2.1 Invoking Octave

2.1.1 Command Line Options
2.1.2 Startup Files

2.2 Quitting Octave
2.3 Commands for Getting Help
2.4 Command Line Editing

2.4.1 Cursor Motion
2.4.2 Killing and Yanking
2.4.3 Commands For Changing Text
2.4.4 Letting Readline Type For You
2.4.5 Commands For Manipulating The History
2.4.6 Customizing readline
2.4.7 Customizing the Prompt
2.4.8 Diary and Echo Commands

2.5 How Octave Reports Errors
2.6 Executable Octave Programs
2.7 Comments in Octave Programs

3. Data Types

3.1 Built-in Data Types

3.1.1 Numeric Objects
3.1.2 String Objects
3.1.3 Data Structure Objects

3.2 User-defined Data Types
3.3 Object Sizes

4. Numeric Data Types

4.1 Matrices

4.1.1 Empty Matrices

4.2 Ranges
4.3 Logical Values
4.4 Predicates for Numeric Objects

5. Strings

5.1 Creating Strings
5.2 Searching and Replacing
5.3 String Conversions
5.4 Character Class Functions

6. Data Structures
7. Containers

7.1 Lists
7.2 Cell Arrays

8. I/O Streams
9. Variables

9.1 Global Variables
9.2 Status of Variables
9.3 Summary of Built-in Variables
9.4 Defaults from the Environment

10. Expressions

10.1 Index Expressions
10.2 Calling Functions

10.2.1 Call by Value
10.2.2 Recursion

10.3 Arithmetic Operators
10.4 Comparison Operators
10.5 Boolean Expressions

10.5.1 Element-by-element Boolean Operators
10.5.2 Short-circuit Boolean Operators

10.6 Assignment Expressions
10.7 Increment Operators
10.8 Operator Precedence

11. Evaluation
12. Statements

12.1 The if Statement
12.2 The switch Statement
12.3 The while Statement
12.4 The do-until Statement
12.5 The for Statement

12.5.1 Looping Over Structure Elements

12.6 The break Statement
12.7 The continue Statement
12.8 The unwind_protect Statement
12.9 The try Statement
12.10 Continuation Lines

13. Functions and Script Files

13.1 Defining Functions
13.2 Multiple Return Values
13.3 Variable-length Argument Lists
13.4 Variable-length Return Lists
13.5 Returning From a Function
13.6 Function Files
13.7 Script Files
13.8 Dynamically Linked Functions
13.9 Organization of Functions Distributed with Octave

14. Error Handling
15. Input and Output

15.1 Basic Input and Output

15.1.1 Terminal Output
15.1.2 Terminal Input
15.1.3 Simple File I/O

15.2 C-Style I/O Functions

15.2.1 Opening and Closing Files
15.2.2 Simple Output
15.2.3 Line-Oriented Input
15.2.4 Formatted Output
15.2.5 Output Conversion for Matrices
15.2.6 Output Conversion Syntax
15.2.7 Table of Output Conversions
15.2.8 Integer Conversions
15.2.9 Floating-Point Conversions
15.2.10 Other Output Conversions
15.2.11 Formatted Input
15.2.12 Input Conversion Syntax
15.2.13 Table of Input Conversions
15.2.14 Numeric Input Conversions
15.2.15 String Input Conversions
15.2.16 Binary I/O
15.2.17 Temporary Files
15.2.18 End of File and Errors
15.2.19 File Positioning

16. Plotting

16.1 Two-Dimensional Plotting
16.2 Specialized Two-Dimensional Plots
16.3 Three-Dimensional Plotting
16.4 Plot Annotations
16.5 Multiple Plots on One Page
16.6 Multiple Plot Windows
16.7 Interaction with gnuplot

17. Matrix Manipulation

17.1 Finding Elements and Checking Conditions
17.2 Rearranging Matrices
17.3 Special Utility Matrices
17.4 Famous Matrices

18. Arithmetic

18.1 Utility Functions
18.2 Complex Arithmetic
18.3 Trigonometry
18.4 Sums and Products
18.5 Special Functions
18.6 Coordinate Transformations
18.7 Mathematical Constants

19. Linear Algebra

19.1 Basic Matrix Functions
19.2 Matrix Factorizations
19.3 Functions of a Matrix

20. Nonlinear Equations
21. Quadrature

21.1 Functions of One Variable
21.2 Orthogonal Collocation

22. Differential Equations

22.1 Ordinary Differential Equations
22.2 Differential-Algebraic Equations

23. Optimization

23.1 Quadratic Programming
23.2 Nonlinear Programming
23.3 Linear Least Squares

24. Statistics

24.1 Basic Statistical Functions
24.2 Tests
24.3 Models
24.4 Distributions

25. Financial Functions
26. Sets
27. Polynomial Manipulations
28. Control Theory

28.1 System Data Structure

28.1.1 Variables common to all OCST system formats
28.1.2 tf format variables
28.1.3 zp format variables
28.1.4 ss format variables

28.2 System Construction and Interface Functions

28.2.1 Finite impulse response system interface functions
28.2.2 State space system interface functions
28.2.3 Transfer function system interface functions
28.2.4 Zero-pole system interface functions
28.2.5 Data structure access functions
28.2.6 Data structure internal functions

28.3 System display functions
28.4 Block Diagram Manipulations
28.5 Numerical Functions
28.6 System Analysis-Properties
28.7 System Analysis-Time Domain
28.8 System Analysis-Frequency Domain
28.9 Controller Design
28.10 Miscellaneous Functions (Not yet properly filed/documented)

29. Signal Processing
30. Image Processing
31. Audio Processing
32. Quaternions
33. System Utilities

33.1 Timing Utilities
33.2 Filesystem Utilities
33.3 Controlling Subprocesses
33.4 Process, Group, and User IDs
33.5 Environment Variables
33.6 Current Working Directory
33.7 Password Database Functions
33.8 Group Database Functions
33.9 System Information

A. Tips and Standards

A.1 Writing Clean Octave Programs
A.2 Tips for Making Code Run Faster.
A.3 Tips for Documentation Strings
A.4 Tips on Writing Comments
A.5 Conventional Headers for Octave Functions

B. Known Causes of Trouble

B.1 Actual Bugs We Haven't Fixed Yet
B.2 Reporting Bugs
B.3 Have You Found a Bug?
B.4 Where to Report Bugs
B.5 How to Report Bugs
B.6 Sending Patches for Octave
B.7 How To Get Help with Octave

C. Installing Octave

C.1 Installation Problems
C.2 Binary Distributions

C.2.1 Installing Octave from a Binary Distribution
C.2.2 Creating a Binary Distribution

D. Emacs Octave Support

D.1 Installing EOS
D.2 Using Octave Mode
D.3 Running Octave From Within Emacs
D.4 Using the Emacs Info Reader for Octave

E. Grammar

E.1 Keywords

F. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE

F.1 Preamble
F.2 Appendix: How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

Concept Index
Variable Index
Function Index
Operator Index