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GNU Octave Beginner's Guide

You're reading from   GNU Octave Beginner's Guide Become a proficient Octave user by learning this high-level scientific numerical tool from the ground up

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jun 2011
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781849513326
Length 280 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Author (1):
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Jesper Schmidt Hansen Jesper Schmidt Hansen
Author Profile Icon Jesper Schmidt Hansen
Jesper Schmidt Hansen
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Table of Contents (15) Chapters Close

GNU Octave
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
1. www.PacktPub.com
2. Preface
1. Introducing GNU Octave FREE CHAPTER 2. Interacting with Octave: Variables and Operators 3. Working with Octave: Functions and Plotting 4. Rationalizing: Octave Scripts 5. Extensions: Write Your Own Octave Functions 6. Making Your Own Package: A Poisson Equation Solver 7. More Examples: Data Analysis 8. Need for Speed: Optimization and Dynamically Linked Functions Pop quiz - Answers

A few optimization techniques


There are a few things you should consider when you wish to optimize your Octave code. Some of these are:

  1. 1. Avoid loops, especially nested loops, whenever possible. Always try to vectorize your code!

  2. 2. Use Octave's built-in functionality. For example, do not try to implement your own linear equation solver because it is unlikely that you can do better than Octave.

  3. 3. Instantiate your array variables before entering a loop in order to minimize memory reallocation and therefore communication overhead with the operating system.

  4. 4. If you do partial vectorization, loop column-wise.

  5. 5. Clear large arrays whenever you are finished using them. In this way, you avoid using the slower parts of the chip memory.

  6. 6. In some situations, functions can execute faster than scripts. So it can be helpful to convert a large script to a function if it is called many times. This is because functions are read only once per Octave session (when they are called for the first time), whereas...

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