GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides a convenient command line interface for solving linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing other numerical experiments using a language that is mostly compatible with Matlab. It may also be used as a batch-oriented language.

Octave has extensive tools for solving common numerical linear algebra problems, finding the roots of nonlinear equations, integrating ordinary functions, manipulating polynomials, and integrating ordinary differential and differential-algebraic equations. It is easily extensible and customizable via user-defined functions written in Octave's own language, or using dynamically loaded modules written in C++, C, Fortran, or other languages.

GNU Octave is also freely redistributable software. You may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation.

The main author and father of Octave is John W. Eaton and by now many other make substantial contributions. Since Octave is free software you are encouraged to help make Octave more useful by writing and contributing additional functions for it, and by reporting any problems you may have.

• An introduction to programming with Octave and some real world applications are given in lecture notes, available at OctaveAtBFH.pdf .
• Find the codes used in the lecture notes at Codes or in one file at Codes.tgz .
• Find the demo codes used in class Demos or in one file at Demos.tgz

• The homepage for Octave provides the source for the program and a lot of information. There is a searchable archive of the news groups for Octave. This is an excellent source of information.
• David Griffiths from the University of Dundee prepared an excellent set of notes on Matlab, these notes apply to Octave as well.
• The original documentation for Octave is available in the HTML format or as a PDF file . The HTML files are available as a compressed archive , to be installed you your computer.
• A 3-page reference card for Octave is available at PDF file.
• The host SourceForge provides an excellent selection of additional packages that will move Octave even closer to Matlab. It is advisable to install some of these additions.
• A command for general linear regression is available at LinearRegression.m .
• Two codes to use a Tikhonov regularization to approximate data or functions by smooth functions are available: for problems with one independent variable use regularization.m and for problems with two independent variables use regularization2D.m . An extensive documentation with examples, description of the algorithm and the mathematical background is available at RegularizationReport.pdf .

• On most Linux distributions Octave is included as a package, on some distributions OctaveForge is also included. If not it is advisable to download the package from www.Octave.org and compile/install it on your computer.
• It is even possible to install Octave on systems from Redmond (WA), see ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/octave/windows/"

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April 1, 1999 by Andreas.Stahel@bfh.ch