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From: wegwerp@gmail.com
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: About alternatives to Matlab
Date: 12 Nov 2006 08:11:36 -0800
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NZTideMan wrote:
> J=E9r=F4me wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >  <http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/>
> >  <http://www.scilab.org/>
> >  <http://scipy.org/>
> >
> > J=E9r=F4me
>
> In addition to these, have a look at Python and in particular NumPy
> (Numeric Python).
> In NumPy there are add on's that make it look exactly like Matlab and
> it's free.
> http://www.python.org/

In fact, numpy is mainly the array structure and scipy contains the
'extensions'. One additional tool you need is matplotlib, which
provides plotting similar to matlab. For a single distribution that
contains everything (python+numpy+scipy+matplotlib+editors+...) look at

http://code.enthought.com/enthon/

In my opionion scilab and octave are both mediocre imitations of matlab
(didn't check recently), which itself is a mediocre language for
everything else than matrices. I personally find Python a very
'pleasant' language, which can be used for everything from websites to
command line stuff. Allthough the matrix stuff is clearly bolted on
later and is still not totally finished, I do see it as a good
competitor for matlab in the near future. It is already used actively,
for example, in the pipeline to process Hubble images.

Cheers, Bas