From help-request at octave dot org Tue Mar 14 11:20:43 2006 Subject: Re: Octave in Universities From: kamaraju kusumanchi To: help at octave dot org CC: help at octave dot org Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:16:22 -0500 John W. Eaton wrote: >On 14-Mar-2006, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote: > >| I personally use matlab because of compatibility issues. Code developed >| under octave is not completely compatible with matlab. > >In what ways? I think if you are careful (and it doesn't really >require that much work) you can write code for Octave that also works >without any changes in Matlab. Yes, you are restricted to a subset of >the language, but I think it is still a useful subset. > > Let me explain my situation. I have access to octave and do not have access to matlab. My collaborators have access to matlab with all the toolboxes loaded etc., They insist on working in matlab and do not even bother to try octave. It is not always that you can change mindsets of people with predetermined opinions. Sometime back, I developed a script of the following structure in octave. some commands definition of function1 definition of function2 use function1 here use function2 here (The above is just an example. Please dont take it literally.) I spent some time on this code and when I sent it to my collaborators, I got a message saying that it does not run in matlab. That is because, matlab does not allow definition of functions inside a script. But octave allows it. I agree that octave does it right (in the sense that it allows functions to be defined inside a script) than matlab. But I would have benefited a lot if there a -matlab-compatible flag. Then before sending it to other people, I for sure will know whether the code will work on matlab or not. When this happened a lot of times, I felt embarrassed. It sends wrong messages to your collaborators. It is not like I do not know programming or anything like that, it is just that different people were using different softwares which are not 100% compatible. >| I would like to see a -matlab-compatible flag in octave. So that octave >| behaves exactly like matlab when this flag is used. > >So it would not allow double-quoted strings, # for comments, etc? >Even in .m files that are distributed with Octave? Is that really >what you want? > I am talking from a user perspective. I think you are talking from a developer's perspective. All I wanted is a way, which tells me whether a given .m file will run without any problems on matlab or will it give errors. I want to do this from octave without using matlab. I dont think I am asking for a simple thing. I am saying it would be good thing if octave has it. raju -- http://kamaraju.googlepages.com/cornell-bazaar http://groups.google.com/group/cornell-bazaar/about ------------------------------------------------------------- Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL. Octave's home on the web: http://www.octave.org How to fund new projects: http://www.octave.org/funding.html Subscription information: http://www.octave.org/archive.html -------------------------------------------------------------