Ebook: An Introduction to Scilab from a Matlab User's Point of View ver. 5.2

Учебник May 2, 2010 INRIA, France
Preliminaries
Customizing Scilab for Windows
Interruption/Termination of Scripts and Scilab Session
Help
Emulated Matlab functions
Syntax
Arithmetic Statements
Built-in Constants
Predefined Global and Environmental Variables
Comparison Operators
Flow Control
General Functions
Variable Types
Numeric Variables — Scalars and Matrices
Special Matrices
Character String Variables
Boolean Variables
Cell arrays
Structures
Lists
Polynomials
Functions
General
Functions that Operate on Scalars and Matrices
File Input and Output
Utility Functions
Scripts
User Functions
Functions in Files
In-line Functions
Functions for operator overloading
Profiling of functions
Translation of Matlab m-files to Scilab Format
Function Libraries and the Start-up File 106
Creating function libraries
Start-up file
User-supplied Libraries
Error Messages and Gotchas
Scilab error messages
Gotchas
A Matlab functions and their Scilab Equivalents
Index
Scilab has progressed significantly since I wrote the previous version of this manual (Scilab, then,
was in Version 2.7). The most important improvement, in my mind, is the new graphic system;
then it just became available as an alternative, now it is the only one supported. It appears to
provide all the features that I missed in the original version. Nevertheless, a description of Scilab’s
graphic capabilities is not included here; I continue to believe that they deserve a manual of their
own.
Another improvement is the built-in editor. It works nicely, and it eliminates an annoyance: one can
load a specific function (or all functions) in the editor into Scilab and it is automatically compiled.
No more forgetting to compile a function after it has been changed.
Overall, Scilab functions are even closer to those of Matlab. For example, function “xgetfile” is
now obsolete; its replacement, function “uigetfile” has the same name as the corresponding Matlab
function. This also hints at a change in attitude. Initially, Scilab appeared to be geared towards
Unix/X Windows with MS Windows just an afterthought. Now there are quite a few functions just
for MS Windows. In addition, according to the Scilab team, Scilab runs “out of the box” on Mac
OS X 10.5.5 (Leopard) and 10.6.x (Snow Leopard).
In this updated version of the manual I have removed outdated restrictions or caveats and included
features that have been added to Scilab since Version 2.7. I am grateful to Sylvestre Ledru and
Vincent Couvert, both members of the Scilab Team, for reading the manuscript and providing
feedback that not only improved this manual but also my understanding of the new capabilities of
Scilab.