Re: Matlab references in docs; distinguishing between ML and Octave

[Ben Abbott]

On Mar 24, 2013, at 2:54 PM, Philip Nienhuis wrote:

> While perusing the Octave documentation about Java I noted several references
> to Matlab; one in particular about "how to distinguish between Octave and
> Matlab".
> 
> 1. Is there a policy about mentioning ML in the Octave docs?
> IMO it should be minimized to "only when unavoidable"; but because of
> Octave's aim for ML compatibility, references to Matlab are all over the
> place.
> 
> 2. What would be a good place in the doc for a description of how to
> distinguish between ML and Octave? The Java section is too narrow-scoped. 
> Dropping this info entirely or referring to the wiki seems a bit
> inappropriate to me. I'd find it a bit double-hearted to aim to be
> ML-compatible while mentioning nowhere how to differentiate between the two
> in scripts and m-file functions.
> 
> 3. A way to distinguish Octave and ML, that works in both, could be to use
> the "computer" function; I saw that ML and Octave return different answers
> for the first output arg ('win32' and "i686-pc-mingw32", resp.; when called
> with 'arch': 'win32' and "mingw32-i686", resp.).
> I don't know what answers Matlab and Octave give on OSX, nor what ML would
> answer on Linux.
> 
> Philip

I think the easiest way to distinguish is to use the "ver" command.

"x = ver ()" returns a structure array with fields "Name", "Version", 
"Release", and "Date".  For Octave x(1).Name equals "Octave", and for Matlab 
x(1).Name equals "Matlab".

Ben