Re: The fabled "Matlab compatibility"

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 8 November 2012 17:08, Daniel Carrera <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Jordi,
>
> On 8 November 2012 22:58, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>>
>> Octave is not meant to be "a Matlab clone", nor is it meant to be
>> "Matlab but without the price tag". Your students already know where
>> to get Matlab without the price tag. I doubt you will agree with me,
>> but I invite to show your students the improvements that Octave has
>> over the Matlab language. If you just show it to them as "Matlab
>> clone", they will not value it ...
>
>
>
> What are some advantages of Octave over Matlab? I do have a small personal
> list, but I wonder if you can add to it:
>
> 1)  Operators:  ++ , -- , += , -= , *= , /=
>
> 2)  Using # for comments is nice IMO.
>
> 3)  I like it as a console application (e.g. starts faster, clutters my
> screen less, etc).
>
> 4) I do think it's important that it is Free Software.
>
> Does that more or less cover it, or did I miss something important?

These are a few more:

    http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#What_features_are_unique_to_Octave.3F
    http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Broadcasting.html

There are a few other differences in some functions here and there. We
do not shy too much from making Octave functions do more if we find it
useful and doesn't break existing Matlab code. For example, the norm()
function accepts a "columns" parameter to do something that is
frequently desired but Matlab can't do this way.

Sometimes we have to backtrack when we do this. For for instance, I
had to recently modify the perms function which used to take a 2nd
argument. Matlab then added a second argument which did something
different than what we did. Thankfully, nobody seemed to be using our
version of the two-arg call, so it wasn't a big problem to change it
to look like Matlab.

- Jordi G. H.