Next: Getting Started, Previous: Preface, Up: Top [Contents][Index]

## 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.

The current version of Octave executes in a graphical user interface (GUI). The GUI hosts an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which includes a code editor with syntax highlighting, built-in debugger, documentation browser, as well as the interpreter for the language itself. A command-line interface for Octave is also available.

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 5.0.90.