GNU Octave project 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 Octaves 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.

Octave was written by John W. Eaton and many others. Because 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.

Command line options:

Here is a complete list of all the command line options that Octave accepts.

--debug
-d
Enter parser debugging mode. Using this option will cause Octaves parser to print a lot of information about the commands it reads, and is probably only useful if you are actually trying to debug the parser.

--echo-commands
-x
Echo commands as they are executed.

--exec-path path
Specify the path to search for programs to run. The value of path specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_EXEC_PATH found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable EXEC_PATH.

--help
-h
-?
Print short help message and exit.

--info-file filename
Specify the name of the info file to use. The value of filename specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_INFO_FILE found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable INFO_FILE.

--info-program program
Specify the name of the info program to use. The value of program specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_INFO_PROGRAM found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable INFO_PROGRAM.

--interactive
-i
Force interactive behavior. This can be useful for running Octave via a remote shell command or inside an Emacs shell buffer. For another way to run Octave within Emacs, see D. Emacs Octave Support.

--no-history
-H
Disable command-line history.

--no-init-file
Dont read the `~/.octaverc or `.octaverc files.

--no-line-editing
Disable command-line editing.

--no-site-file
Dont read the site-wide `octaverc file.

--norc
-f
Dont read any of the system or user initialization files at startup. This is equivalent to using both of the options --no-init-file and --no-site-file.

--path path
-p path
Specify the path to search for function files. The value of path specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_PATH found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable LOADPATH.

--silent
--quiet
-q
Dont print the usual greeting and version message at startup.

--traditional
--braindead
Set initial values for user-preference variables to the following values for compatibility with MATLAB.

PS1 = ">> "
PS2 = ""
beep_on_error = true
crash_dumps_octave_core = false
default_save_format = "mat-binary"
fixed_point_format = true
page_screen_output = false
print_empty_dimensions = false
warn_function_name_clash = false

--verbose
-V
Turn on verbose output.

--version
-v
Print the program version number and exit.

file
Execute commands from file.

Octave also includes several built-in variables that contain information about the command line, including the number of arguments and all of the options.