Simple numerical variables

In the following, we shall see how to instantiate simple variables. By simple variables, we mean scalars, vectors, and matrices. First, a scalar variable with name a is assigned the value 1 by the command:

octave:1> a=1
a = 1

That is, you write the variable name, in this case a, and then you assign a value to the variable using the equal sign. Note that in Octave, variables are not instantiated with a type specifier as it is known from C and other lower-level languages. Octave interprets a number as a real number unless you explicitly tell it otherwise1.

You can display the value of a variable simply by typing the variable name:

octave:2>a
a = 1

Let us move on and instantiate an array of numbers:

octave:3 > b = [1 2 3]
b =
1 2 3

Octave interprets this as the row vector:

(2.1)

rather than a simple one-dimensional array. The elements (or the entries) in a row vector can also be separated by commas, so the command above could have been:

octave:3> b = [1,...