<html lang="en"> <head> <title>Invoking Octave from the Command Line - Untitled</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"> <meta name="description" content="Untitled"> <meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13"> <link title="Top" rel="start" href="index.html#Top"> <link rel="up" href="Getting-Started.html#Getting-Started" title="Getting Started"> <link rel="next" href="Quitting-Octave.html#Quitting-Octave" title="Quitting Octave"> <link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home" title="Texinfo Homepage"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <style type="text/css"><!-- pre.display { font-family:inherit } pre.format { font-family:inherit } pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller } pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller } span.sc { font-variant:small-caps } span.roman { font-family:serif; font-weight:normal; } span.sansserif { font-family:sans-serif; font-weight:normal; } --></style> </head> <body> <div class="node"> <a name="Invoking-Octave-from-the-Command-Line"></a> <p> Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Quitting-Octave.html#Quitting-Octave">Quitting Octave</a>, Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Getting-Started.html#Getting-Started">Getting Started</a> <hr> </div> <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). <ul class="menu"> <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> </ul> </body></html>