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2.1.1 Command Line Options

Here is a complete list of all the command line options that Octave accepts.

--debug

-d

Enter parser debugging mode. Using this option will cause Octave's parser to print a lot of information about the commands it reads, and is probably only useful if you are actually trying to debug the parser.

--echo-commands

-x

Echo commands as they are executed.

--exec-path path

Specify the path to search for programs to run. The value of path specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_EXEC_PATH found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable EXEC_PATH.

--help

-h

-?

Print short help message and exit.

--info-file filename

Specify the name of the info file to use. The value of filename specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_INFO_FILE found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable INFO_FILE.

--info-program program

Specify the name of the info program to use. The value of program specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_INFO_PROGRAM found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable INFO_PROGRAM.

--interactive

-i

Force interactive behavior. This can be useful for running Octave via a remote shell command or inside an Emacs shell buffer. For another way to run Octave within Emacs, see section D Emacs Octave Support.

--no-init-file

Don't read the ‘~/.octaverc’ or ‘.octaverc’ files.

--no-line-editing

Disable command-line editing.

--no-site-file

Don't read the site-wide ‘octaverc’ file.

--norc

-f

Don't read any of the system or user initialization files at startup. This is equivalent to using both of the options --no-init-file and --no-site-file.

--path path

-p path

Specify the path to search for function files. The value of path specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_PATH found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable LOADPATH.

--silent

--quiet

-q

Don't print the usual greeting and version message at startup.

--traditional

--braindead

Set initial values for user-preference variables to the following values for compatibility with MATLAB.

PS1                           = ">> "
PS2                           = ""
beep_on_error                 = 1
default_save_format           = "mat-binary"
define_all_return_values      = 1
do_fortran_indexing           = 1
crash_dumps_octave_core       = 0
empty_list_elements_ok        = 1
implicit_str_to_num_ok        = 1
ok_to_lose_imaginary_part     = 1
page_screen_output            = 0
prefer_column_vectors         = 0
print_empty_dimensions        = 0
treat_neg_dim_as_zero         = 1
warn_function_name_clash      = 0
whitespace_in_literal_matrix  = "traditional"

--verbose

-V

Turn on verbose output.

--version

-v

Print the program version number and exit.

file

Execute commands from file.

Octave also includes several built-in variables that contain information about the command line, including the number of arguments and all of the options.

Built-in Variable: argv

The command line arguments passed to Octave are available in this variable. For example, if you invoked Octave using the command

octave --no-line-editing --silent

argv would be a string vector with the elements --no-line-editing and --silent.

If you write an executable Octave script, argv will contain the list of arguments passed to the script. see section 2.6 Executable Octave Programs.

Built-in Variable: program_invocation_name

Built-in Variable: program_name

When Octave starts, the value of the built-in variable program_invocation_name is automatically set to the name that was typed at the shell prompt to run Octave, and the value of program_name is automatically set to the final component of program_invocation_name. For example, if you typed ‘/usr/local/bin/octave’ to start Octave, program_invocation_name would have the value "/usr/local/bin/octave", and program_name would have the value "octave".

If executing a script from the command line (e.g., octave foo.m) or using an executable Octave script, the program name is set to the name of the script. See section 2.6 Executable Octave Programs for an example of how to create an executable Octave script.

Here is an example of using these variables to reproduce Octave's command line.

printf ("%s", program_name);
for i = 1:nargin
  printf (" %s", argv(i,:));
endfor
printf ("\n");

See section 8.1 Index Expressions for an explanation of how to properly index arrays of strings and substrings in Octave, and See section 11.1 Defining Functions for information about the variable nargin.