octave + octave-forge via Debian's apt-get

[A. Danial]

I've installed octave and octave-forge on a Debian machine via the
convenient apt-get utility, ie,

  apt-get install octave
  apt-get install octave-forge 

It leaves me with octave version 2.1.53 but I don't know how to 
deterimine the octave-forge version from the octave prompt, or which 
octave-forge functions are available.

http://packages.debian.org/stable/math/octave-forge suggests that
even an old version of octave-forge would give me the 'sparse' function
but it isn't available on my Debian machine after the apt-get installs.
Does some system or environment variable or .octaverc setting need to
be made to enable octave-forge functions?     -- Al



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