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<h3 class="section">2.1 Invoking Octave from the Command Line</h3>
<p>Normally, Octave is used interactively by running the program
‘<samp><span class="samp">octave</span></samp>’ without any arguments. Once started, Octave reads
commands from the terminal until you tell it to exit.
<p>You can also specify the name of a file on the command line, and Octave
will read and execute the commands from the named file and then exit
when it is finished.
<p>You can further control how Octave starts by using the command-line
options described in the next section, and Octave itself can remind you
of the options available. Type ‘<samp><span class="samp">octave --help</span></samp>’ to display all
available options and briefly describe their use (‘<samp><span class="samp">octave -h</span></samp>’ is a
shorter equivalent).
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<li><a accesskey="1" href="Command-Line-Options.html#Command-Line-Options">Command Line Options</a>
<li><a accesskey="2" href="Startup-Files.html#Startup-Files">Startup Files</a>
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