GNU Octave is a free and open-source mathematical software package and scripting language. The scripting language is intended to be compatible with MATLAB, but the two packages are not interchangeable. Don’t use both the [matlab] and [octave] tags, unless the question is explicitly about the similarities or differences between the two.
GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted scripting language, primarily intended for numerical computations. It provides capabilities for the numerical solution of linear and nonlinear problems, and for performing other numerical experiments. It also provides extensive graphics capabilities for data visualization and manipulation. Octave has a modular framework that allows it to utilize hardware such as GPUs, parallel compute clusters, and physical sensors.
Octave is normally used through its interactive command line interface, but it can also be used to write non-interactive programs. It is quite similar to Matlab, so many programs are easily portable.
It is extensible and customizable via user-defined functions written in Octave's own language, or via dynamically loaded modules written in C++, C, Fortran, or other languages.
Octave Online is a free GNU Octave editor and prompt in your browser. Octave Online is powered by the open-source GNU Octave project, whose syntax is mostly compatible with Matlab.
