Updated March 2, 2023
Difference Between Matlab and Octave
MatLab is generally referred for Matrix Laboratory. It is a high-performance language for technical computing. It is a multi-paradigm programming language and it supports functional, imperative, procedural and object-oriented language. It was designed by Cleve Moler. It was developed by Math Works. Octave is also known as GNU Octave. It is available in about 19 languages. It is mainly used in solving the linear and nonlinear problems numerically, and for performing numerical experiments it is mostly compatible with MATLAB. It is one of the free alternatives for Matlab. Octave is also referred to as structural programming language that supports common C Standard Library functions and also certain UNIX system calls and functions.
Matlab
- Matlab is being used in various aspects like math and computation, development of the algorithm, data analysis, exploration and visualization, modeling, simulation and prototyping, application development including user interface building. It was originally developed to provide easy access to matrix software. Matlab was initially released in the year 1984. It was written in C, C++, and Java. It supports multi-operating systems like Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. It is mainly based on numerical computing type.
- In Matlab, there are five integral parts and those are Matlab language as this is a high-level matrix/ array language with control flow statements, functions, data structures, I/O, and object-oriented features. The other one is the Matlab environment as this is a set of tools and facilities to work with users or programmers. Handle Graphics, that includes high-level commands for two dimensional and three-dimensional data visualization, image processing, animation and presenting graphics. The MatLab function library and MatLab API is there with the vast collection of computational algorithms and the library that allows you to write C and Fortran programs that interact with Matlab.
Octave
- Octave is mainly extensible as it is using dynamically loadable modules. It uses an interpreter to execute the octave scripting language. Its interpreter has the graphics based on Open GL for creating the plots, graphs, charts and to save and print the same. It also includes the Graphical user interface in addition to the traditional command-line interface. It is a high-level programming language mainly used for computing numerical. It was developed by John W. Eaton. It was initially released in the year 1980. It was written in C, C++, and Fortran.
- It mainly consists of function calls or script. Its syntax is mainly matrix-based and provides various functions for matrix operations. Octave does support various data structures and object-oriented programming. It has great features and compatible with other languages like syntax and functional compatibility for MATLAB. It shares other features like built-in support for complex numbers, powerful built-in math functions, and extensive function libraries and in terms of user-defined functions as well.
Head To Head Comparison Between Matlab and Octave (Infographics)
Below is the top 6 difference between Matlab vs Octave
Key Difference between Matlab and Octave
Both Matlab vs Octave web service are popular choices in the market; let us discuss some of the major Difference:
- MatLab does not support C-style auto-increment and assignment operators. Octave does C-style auto-increment and assignment operators like i++, ++i, etc.
- Matlab responds differently on the computing of boolean values like in syntax form, it will say it’s not supported form. Octave responds differently to the same thing as ans=0.
- Matlab can execute the file in the directory as it was called from the command line. The new version also supports these means execute in the same way but the old version of octave does not support the same.
- In MatLab “! String” syntax calls a shell with command STRING. But octave does not recognize ‘!’ as the system call since it is used in logical operations.
- In Matlab, it is allowed to load the empty files. In Octave, it does not allow to load the empty files.
- Matlab only supports fprintf as the command for printing to the screen. Octave supports both printf and fprintf as the command for printing to screen.
- In MatLab, it does not allow whitespace before the transpose operator. In Octave, it allows the whitespace.
- In Matlab, it always requires … for line continuation. In octave, it’s not necessary to put them …
- In Matlab, the value can be assigned like a = b+1, c=a. In octave, it can be written as c=a=b+1.
- In Matlab, we can use ‘~’, not ‘!’. In Octave, it allows users to use both ~ and ! with Boolean values.
- In Matlab, it uses percent sign ‘%’ to begin the comment. In Octave, it uses both hash symbol # and the percent sign % interchangeably.
- Matlab uses ^ for exponentiation but octave can use ^ or **
- Matlab uses end to end block. Octave can use end or specify the block with endif or
- Matlab has a very good interface but the octave is having lack of interface in its earlier versions after version 4.0 octave is having its default interface.
Matlab vs Octave Comparison Table
Let us discuss the comparison between Matlab vs Octave are as follows:
| The Basic Comparison | Matlab | Octave |
| Definition | It is a matrix laboratory, referred to as language used for technical computing. | It is programming language used for numerical computing. |
| Programmed | It was written in C, C++ and Java programming language. | It was written in C, C++ and Fortran Language. |
| Interface | It has better interface comparatively. | Its interface is not that good as MATLAB is having. |
| RAM | It consumes more RAM as compared to Octave. | It consumes less RAM than MATLAB. |
| Free | It is not free | It is free |
| Website | Mathworks.com | Gnu.org/software/octave |
Conclusion
MATLAB vs Octave are mainly used for the same purpose. The main difference is syntax and other features. Matlab consist of specialized toolboxes which are not part of Octave. They are not fully compatible that is code written in Matlab can crush in octave and vice versa. The main advantage of Matlab is the huge number of ready to use tools.
The main goal of the octave is to give freedom to users to choose which software to use run their code. It has drop-in compatibility with Matlab. When running interactively, octave uses the commands typed in an internal buffer so that they can be recalled and edited. It includes a limited amount of support for organizing the data in structures.
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