The Code Corner

What is it?

Matlab is developed by MathWorks Inc. and provides a complete analysis package. The program language is interpreted and can interface with other languages such as C++, .NET and Java. Additional functionality can be added to the core functions via toolboxes. It is available for the three major platforms: Windows, Mac OSX and *nix and works similar on each.

What is different?

One of the big differences between Matlab and other programming languages is the processing of multi–dimensional arrays: in most programming languages these need to be processed element–wise. Matlab processes the matrices column- or row–wise. This requires a slightly different mindset and the need to suppress the urge to make a for loop whenever a vector or matrix is encountered. Otherwise, most of the standard data types are available, and because Matlab is based on an implementation of Java, there are also Object Oriented Porgramming (OOP) structures present.

What is next?

Too start with Matlab programming, an installation of Matlab is required. However, the software is not cheap for regular consumers. Students or employees of universities as well as businesses may be able to buy the software with a discount. There is also an open source alternative called GNU Octave. It's very similar to Matlab, and some code can be ported to Octave without too much trouble. Because it was developed for *nix platforms, it does require additonal software to run on Windows platforms (e.g. Cygwin).