April 06, 2022
News for version 9 8 7 6 5 4.4 4.2 4 3.8 3.6 3.4 3.2 3 2 1 (Release History)
Many functions in Octave can be called in a command form—no parentheses for invocation and no return argument assignment—or in a functional form—parentheses and ‘=’ for assignment of return values.
Command Form Example
mkdir new_directory
Function Form Example
status = mkdir ("new_directory")
Octave now handles errors that occur in a consistent manner. If called in command form and there is a failure, an error is thrown and a message printed. If called in functional form, no error or message is printed and the failure is communicated to the programmer via the output status variable.
The following list of functions have been modified.
copyfilefcntlfileattribkilllinkmkfifomovefilerenamermdirsymlinkunlinkCalling a user-defined function with too many inputs or outputs is now
an error. The interpreter makes this check automatically. If a
function uses varargin then the check is skipped for function inputs,
and if a function uses varargout then the check is skipped for function
outputs. Input validation for functions typically begins with checking
that the number of inputs and outputs match expectations. Existing code
can be simplified by removing these checks which are now done by the
interpreter. Typically, code blocks like the following can simply be
deleted.
## Checking number of inputs
if (nargin > 2)
print_usage ();
endif
## Checking number of outputs
if (nargout > 1)
print_usage ();
endif
Binary and hexadecimal constants like 0b101 and 0xDEADBEEF now
create integers (unsigned by default) with sizes determined from the
number of digits present. For example, 0xff creates a uint8 value
and 0xDEADBEEF creates a uint64 value. You may also use a suffix of
the form u8, u16, u32, u64, s8, s16, s32, or s64 to
explicitly specify the data type to use (u or s to indicate unsigned
or signed and the number to indicate the integer size).
Binary constants are limited to 64 binary digits and hexadecimal
constants are limited to 16 hexadecimal digits with no automatic
rounding or conversion to floating point values. Note that this may
cause problems in existing code. For example, an expression like
[0x1; 0x100; 0x10000] will be uint8 (because of the rules of
concatenating integers of different sizes) with the larger values
truncated (because of the saturation semantics of integer values). To
avoid these kinds of problems either: 1) declare the first integer to be
of the desired size such as [0x1u32; 0x100; 0x10000], or 2) pad
constants in array expressions with leading zeros so that they use the
same number of digits for each value such as
[0x00_00_01; 0x00_01_00; 0x01_00_00].
The colon operator now works for integer (int8, int16, …, uint64) and single data types. However, only double ranges use a memory-efficient storage scheme internally. Other data types are stored as ordinary arrays.
The increment and decrement operators ++ and -- must “hug” their
corresponding variables. In previous versions of Octave, whitespaces
between these operators and the variable they affect were allowed. That
is no longer the case.
The mldivide function (i.e., the \ operator) now uses an LU
decomposition to solve nearly singular full square matrices. This is
Matlab-compatible and yields results which more nearly minimize norm
(A*x - b). Previously, Octave computed a minimum-norm solution.
The factor function has been overhauled for speed. For large
inputs > 1e14, it can be up to 10,000 times faster.
The isprime function uses a new primality testing algorithm
that is up to 50,000 times faster for inputs > 1e14.
The betainc function now calculates an exact output for the
important special cases where a or b are 1.
The whos function now displays an additional attribute ‘s’ when
the variable is a sparse type.
As part of GSoC 2020, Abdallah K. Elshamy implemented the
jsondecode and jsonencode functions to read and write JSON data.
As part of GSoC 2021, Abdallah K. Elshamy implemented the
jupyter_notebook classdef class. This class supports running and
filling Jupyter Notebooks using the Octave language kernel from Octave
itself. Making the evaluation of long-running Jupyter Notebooks on a
computing server without permanent browser connection possible.
By default, the history file is now located at $DATA/octave/history,
where $DATA is a platform dependent location for (roaming) user data
files (e.g., ${XDG_DATA_HOME} or, if that is not set, ~/.local/share on
Unix-like operating systems or %APPDATA% on Windows).
For Octave on Windows OS, the minimum required version of the Windows API is now 6.1 (Windows 7 or newer).
The non-re-entrant version of the QHull library “libqhull” was deprecated upstream. Octave now (optionally) requires the re-entrant version of that library “libqhull_r” instead.
Octave’s build system no longer appends “++” to the end of the
“magick++” library name (set with the --with-magick= configure flag).
The real name of the “magick++” library (including any potentially
trailing “++”) needs to be set in that option now.
The pkg update command now accepts options that are passed to pkg install for each updated package. Specifying -local or
-global will restrict update checks to local or global
installed packages, respectively.
The graphical user interface is now available in Hungarian and Turkish.
In debug mode, symbol values are now shown in tooltips when hovering variables in the editor panel.
The “Disable global shortcuts when Command Window has focus” GUI preference under the Shortcuts tab is now disabled by default. This option disables keyboard shortcuts to avoid interference with readline key strokes in the Command Window. Unlike versions prior to Octave 7, this preference now also affects the Ctrl-C/V shortcuts for copy/paste.
In command line mode, i.e. when Octave is started without the --gui option,
the doc command now opens the GUI documentation browser as a standalone widget,
provided that Octave was compiled with GUI support.
Support for Qt4 for both graphics and the GUI has been removed.
If a working LaTeX tool chain is found on the path, including latex,
dvipng, and dvisvgm binaries, then text strings can now be rendered
properly when using the "latex" value for the text objects’
"interpreter" property and axes objects’ "ticklabelinterpreter".
Type doc "latex interpreter" for further info.
The "Marker" property for plot objects now accepts | which draws
a vertical line or _ which draws a horizontal line.
The FMT format argument for plot commands now accepts long forms for
color names which may be more understandable than the existing
one-letter codes. For example, the RGB value [0 0 0] can now be
specified by "black" in addition to "k".
The color graphics properties, for example "EdgeColor" or
"FaceColor", now accept HTML specifications. An HTML specification is
a string that begins with the character ‘#’ and is followed by either 3
or 6 hexadecimal digits. For example, magenta which is 100% red and
blue values can specified by "#FF00FF" or "#F0F".
The additional property "contextmenu" has been added to all graphics
objects. It is equivalent to the previously used "uicontextmenu"
property which is hidden now.
uicontrol objects now fully implement the "Off" and "Inactive"
values of the "Enable" property. When the value is "Off", no
interaction with the object occurs and the uicontrol changes color
(typically to gray) to indicate it is disabled. When the value is
"Inactive", the object appears normally (no change in color), but it
is not possible to change the value of the object (such as modifying
text in an Edit box or clicking on a RadioButton).
The "ListBoxTop" property for uicontrol objects has been
implemented for set commands.
The Title property for print formats such as PDF or SVG is now set
to the title displayed on the figure window which contains the plot.
Additional properties have been added to the axes graphics object:
"alphamap" (not yet implemented)"alphascale" (not yet implemented)"colorscale" (not yet implemented)"fontsizemode" (not yet implemented)"innerposition" (equivalent to "position")"interactions" (not yet implemented)"layout" (not yet implemented)"legend" (not yet implemented)"nextseriesindex" (read-only, used by scatter
graphics objects)"positionconstraint" (replacement for "activepositionproperty"
which is now a hidden property. No plans for removal.)"toolbar" (not yet implemented)"xaxis" (not yet implemented)"yaxis" (not yet implemented)"zaxis" (not yet implemented)The function griddata now implements the "v4" Biharmonic Spline
Interpolation method. In adddition, the function now accepts 3-D inputs
by passing the data to griddata3.
Coordinate transformation functions cart2sph, sph2cart,
cart2pol, and pol2cart now accept either row or column vectors for
coordinate inputs. A single coordinate matrix with one variable per
column can still be used as function input, but a single output variable
will now contain just the first output coordinate, and will no longer
return the full output coordinate matrix. Output size matches the size
of input vectors, or in the case of an input matrix will be column
vectors with rows corresponding to the input coordinate matrix.
The function dec2bin and dec2hex now support negative numbers.
The function factor now supports uint64 inputs larger than
flintmax.
The function primes now supports char inputs.
The functions quantile and prctile now permit operating on
dimensions greater than ndims (x).
The function iqr now uses Matlab compatible interpolation for
quantile values. The dimension input now allows a vector, “all”, and
dimensions greater than ndims (x). The function also handles
Inf and NaN input values in a Matlab-compatible manner.
The function importdata now produces more compatible results when
the file contains a 2-D text matrix.
The file functions copyfile, mkdir, movefile, rmdir now return
a logical value (true/false) rather than a numeric value (1/0).
uimenu now accepts property "Text" which is identical to
"Label". Matlab recommends using "Text" in new code, although there
is no announced date for deprecating "Label".
The functions scatter and scatter3 now return a handle to a
scatter graphics object. For compatibility, they return an hggroup of
patch graphics objects when the "gnuplot" graphics toolkit is used. In
previous versions of Octave, these functions returned an hggroup of
patch graphics objects for all graphics toolkits.
The functions bar and barh now handle stacked negative bar values
in a Matlab-compatible manner. Negative values now stack below the zero
axis independently of a positive value bars in the same stack.
Previously the negative bars could overlap positive bars depending on
drawing order.
The functions bar and barh now use colors from the "ColorOrder"
axes property rather than the "Colormap" figure property unless one
of the histogram options (@qcode{“hist”}, @qcode{“histc”} was specified.
The function saveas now defaults to saving in Octave figure format
(.ofig) rather than PDF (.pdf).
A new warning ID ("Octave:unimplemented-matlab-functionality") has
been added which prints a warning when Octave’s parser recognizes valid
Matlab code, but for which Octave does not yet implement the
functionality. By default, this warning is enabled.
When Octave is started with the --traditional option for maximum
compatibility the print_struct_array_contents internal variable is set
to true.
The function repelem now produces a row vector output when the input is
a scalar.
The functions var and std now accept a weight vector as input and
compute the weigthed variance. Dimension input now allows a vector and
the keyword “all”.
The following functions and operators have been deprecated in Octave 7 and will be removed from Octave 9 (or whatever version is the second major release after 7):
Functions
| Function | Replacement |
|---|---|
disable_diagonal_matrix |
optimize_diagonal_matrix |
disable_permutation_matrix |
optimize_permutation_matrix |
disable_range |
optimize_range |
Operators
| Operator | Replacement | Description |
|---|---|---|
** |
^ |
Matrix exponent |
.** |
.^ |
Element-by-element exponent |
.+ |
+ |
Element-by-element addition |
.- |
- |
Element-by-element subtraction |
Interpreter
The use of '...' for line continuations inside double-quoted
strings has been deprecated. Use '\' for line continuations
inside strings instead.
The use of '\' as a line continuation outside of double-quoted
strings has been deprecated. Use '...' for line continuations
instead.
Any trailing whitespace after a '\' line continuation has been
deprecated. Delete unnecessary trailing whitespace.
The following functions were deprecated in Octave 6 and will be removed from Octave 8 (or whatever version is the second major release after 6):
Functions
| Function | Replacement |
|---|---|
runtests |
oruntests |
The environment variable used by mkoctfile for linker flags is now
LDFLAGS rather than LFLAGS. LFLAGS was deprecated in Octave 6,
and a warning is now emitted if it is used, but it will continue to
work.
The following functions and properties were deprecated in Octave 5 and have been removed from Octave 7.
Functions
| Function | Replacement |
|---|---|
output_max_field_width |
output_precision |
is_keyword |
iskeyword |
Properties
| Object | Property | Value |
|---|---|---|
text |
fontangle |
"oblique" |
uibuttongroup |
fontangle |
"oblique" |
uicontrol |
fontangle |
"oblique" |
uipanel |
fontangle |
"oblique" |
uitable |
fontangle |
"oblique" |
The prototype JIT compiler has been removed from Octave. Since it was
first added as part of a Google Summer of Code project in 2012, no one
has ever seriously taken on further development of it and it still does
nothing significant. It is out of date with the default interpreter
that walks the parse tree. Even though we have fixed the configure
script to disable it by default, people still ask questions about how to
build it, but it doesn’t seem that they are doing that to work on it but
because they think it will make Octave code run faster (it never did,
except for some extremely simple bits of code as examples for
demonstration purposes only). The following functions related to the
JIT compiler have also been removed: debug_jit, jit_enable,
jit_failcnt, and jit_startcnt.
cospigetpixelpositionendsWithfill3jsondecodejsonencodejupyter_notebooklistfontsmatlab.net.base64decodematlab.net.base64encodememoryordqzrngsinpistartsWithstreamribbonturbouniquetolxtickangleytickangleztickangle