Octave review

[Matthias Brennwald]

On Feb 7, 2009, at 7:03 PM, help-octave-request at octave.org wrote:

>> The syntax is identical to Matlab's syntax
>>
>> It's close, but there are some differences.
>
> What are we missing as far as syntax goes? I thought it was only
> specific functions that are missing, or features like object
> orientation.

There is very few missing from Octave, but there are quite a few  
things in Octave that are not in Matlab. Take comments as an example:  
the '#' works in Octave (and it's the default, in fact), but Matlab  
does not understand it. Or strings: mystring = "Hello?" will throw an  
Error in Matlab, but not in Octave.

So, while the statement 'Octave syntax is almost identical to that of  
Matlab' is usually understood in the sense that Octave syntax is  
largely compatible with that of Matlab, the reverse is certainly not  
true. This may be a nice feature, but it may also be considered as a  
problem (especially if one uses Octave to write code that should also  
work with Matlab).


Matthias