Using Octave

First, follow the installation guide to install GNU Octave on your system. Then, launch the interactive prompt by typing octave in a terminal or by clicking the icon in the programs menu. For further guidance, see the manual page on Running Octave.

Variable Assignment

Assign values to variables with = (Note: assignment is pass-by-value). Read more about variables.

a = 1;

Comments

# or % start a comment line, that continues to the end of the line. Read more <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Comments.html">about comments</a>.

Command evaluation

The output of every command is printed to the console unless terminated with a semicolon ;. The <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFdisp.html">disp</a> command can be used to print output anywhere. Use <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFquit.html">exit</a> or <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFquit.html">quit</a> to quit the console. Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Simple-Examples.html">about command evaluation</a>.

t = 99 + 1  <span class="comment"># prints 't = 100'</span>
t = 99 + 1; <span class="comment"># nothing is printed</span>
disp(t);

t =  100
100

Elementary math

Many mathematical operators are available in addition to the standard arithmetic. Operations are floating-point. Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Arithmetic.html">about elementary math</a>.

x = 3/4*pi;
y = sin(x)

y =  0.70711

Matrices

Arrays in Octave are called matrices. One-dimensional matrices are referred to as vectors. Use a space or a comma , to separate elements in a row and semicolon ; to start a new row. Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Linear-Algebra.html">about matrices</a>.

rowVec = [8 6 4]

rowVec =
  8   6   4

columnVec = [8; 6; 4]

columnVec =
  8
  6
  4

mat = [8 6 4; 2 0 -2]

mat =
  8   6   4
  2   0  -2

size(mat)

ans =
  2   3

length(rowVec)

ans =  3

Linear Algebra

Many common linear algebra operations are simple to program using Octave’s matrix syntax. Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Linear-Algebra.html">about linear algebra</a>.

columnVec * rowVec

ans =
  64   48   32
  48   36   24
  32   24   16

rowVec * columnVec

ans =  116

columnVec<span class="string">'</span>

ans =
  8   6   4

Accessing Elements

Octave is 1-indexed. Matrix elements are accessed as matrix(rowNum, columnNum). Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Index-Expressions.html">about accessing elements</a>.

mat(2,3)

ans = -2

Control flow wih loops

Octave supports for and while loops, as well as other control flow structures. Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Statements.html">about control flow</a>.

x = zeros (50,1);
<span class="keyword">for</span> i = 1:2:100 <span class="comment"># iterate from 1 to 100 with step size 2</span>
  x(i) = i^2;
<span class="keyword">endfor</span>

y = zeros (50,1);
k = 1;
step = 2;
<span class="keyword">while</span> (k <= (100-step))
  y(i) = k^2;
  k = k + step;
<span class="keyword">endwhile</span>

Vectorization

For-loops can often be replaced or simplified using vector syntax. The operators *, /, and ^ all support element-wise operations writing a dot . before the operators. Many other functions operate element-wise by default (<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFsin.html">sin</a>, +, -, etc.). Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Vectorization-and-Faster-Code-Execution.html">about vectorization</a>.

i = 1:2:100;      <span class="comment"># create an array with 50-elements</span>
x = i.^2;         <span class="comment"># each element is squared</span>
y = x + 9;        <span class="comment"># add 9 to each element</span>
z = y./i;         <span class="comment"># divide each element in y by the corresponding value in i</span>
w = sin (i / 10); <span class="comment"># take the sine of each element divided by 10</span>

Plotting

The function <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFplot.html">plot</a> can be called with vector arguments to create 2D line and scatter plots. Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Two_002dDimensional-Plots.html">about plotting</a>.

plot (i/10, w);
title (<span class="string">'w = sin(i/10)'</span>);
xlabel (<span class="string">'i ÷ 10'</span>);
ylabel (<span class="string">'w'</span>);

<img src="octave_basics-1.png" alt="octave_basics-1.png">

Strings

Strings are simply arrays of characters. Strings can be composed using C-style formatting with <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFsprintf.html">sprintf</a> or <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFfprintf.html">fprintf</a>. Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Strings.html">about strings</a>.

firstString = <span class="string">"hello world"</span>;
secondString = <span class="string">"!"</span>;
[firstString, secondString] <span class="comment"># concatenate both strings</span>

ans = hello world!

fprintf (<span class="string">"%s %.10f \n"</span>, <span class="string">"The number is:"</span>, 10)

The number is: 10.0000000000 

If-else

Conditional statements can be used to create branching logic in your code. Read more

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/The-if-Statement.html">in the manual</a>.

<span class="comment"># Print 'Foo'      if divisible by 7,</span>
<span class="comment">#       'Fizz'     if divisible by 3,</span>
<span class="comment">#       'Buzz'     if divisible by 5,</span>
<span class="comment">#       'FizzBuzz' if divisible by 3 and 5</span>
<span class="keyword">for</span> i = 1:1:20
  outputString = <span class="string">""</span>;
  <span class="keyword">if</span> (rem (i, 3) == 0)  <span class="comment"># rem is the remainder function</span>
    outputString = [outputString, <span class="string">"Fizz"</span>];
  <span class="keyword">endif</span>
  <span class="keyword">if</span> (rem (i, 5) == 0)
    outputString = [outputString, <span class="string">"Buzz"</span>];
  <span class="keyword">elseif</span> (rem(i,7) == 0)
    outputString = <span class="string">"Foo"</span>;
  <span class="keyword">else</span>
    outputString = outputString;
  <span class="keyword">endif</span>
  fprintf(<span class="string">"i=%g: %s \n"</span>, i, outputString);
<span class="keyword">endfor</span>

i=1:  
i=2:  
i=3: Fizz 
i=4:  
i=5: Buzz 
i=6: Fizz 
i=7: Foo 
i=8:  
i=9: Fizz 
i=10: Buzz 
i=11:  
i=12: Fizz 
i=13:  
i=14: Foo 
i=15: FizzBuzz 
i=16:  
i=17:  
i=18: Fizz 
i=19:  
i=20: Buzz 

Getting Help

The <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFhelp.html">help</a> and <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFdoc.html">doc</a> commands can be invoked at the

Octave prompt to print documentation for any function.

help plot
doc plot

Octave forge packages

Community-developed packages can be added from the <a href="http://octave.sourceforge.net/index.html">Octave Forge</a> website to extend the functionality of Octave’s core library. (Matlab users: Forge packages act similarly to Matlab’s toolboxes.) The <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/XREFpkg.html">pkg</a> command is used to manage these packages. For example, to use the image processing library

from the Forge, use:

pkg install -forge image <span class="comment"># install package</span>
pkg load image           <span class="comment"># load new functions into workspace</span>

<a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Packages.html">Read more about packages</a>.