GNU Octave: Introduction

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## 1 A Brief Introduction to Octave

GNU Octave is a high-level language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It is typically used for such problems as solving linear and nonlinear equations, numerical linear algebra, statistical analysis, and for performing other numerical experiments. It may also be used as a batch-oriented language for automated data processing.

Until recently GNU Octave provided a command-line interface with graphical results displayed in separate windows. The current version (version 3.8, released in late 2013) also provides, by default, a graphical user interface.

GNU Octave is freely redistributable software. You may redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. The GPL is included in this manual, see Copying.

This manual provides comprehensive documentation on how to install, run, use, and extend GNU Octave. Additional chapters describe how to report bugs and help contribute code.

This document corresponds to Octave version 3.8.2.