Matlab is an interactive programming environment with scientific orientation. It allows to collect, analyse and graph data.
It has a GUI interface and a programming language called Matlab. Matlab is a very high level language without any heavy programming features, it serves a purpose and that is analysis. Its extensive and efficient matrix capabilities are based on the BLAS/LAPACK libraries. It has packages for system simulation (Simulink), digital processing, neural networks, etc, and it can output C/Fortran code out of a Matlab program. Matlab is commercial software, however for the GNU at mind, a clone is Gnu Octave and Scilab. Scilab is compatible with Matlab 5 in all but a few ways, however it is a slower and harder to use system. Other commercial concurrents include IDL (Interactive Data Language) and PVWave. Another Open Source approach for Linux and Win32 to emulate Matlab is Euler 95, which is a rival to Scilab.
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