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2.1.1 Command Line Options

Here is a complete list of all the command line options that Octave accepts.

--debug
-d
Enter parser debugging mode. Using this option will cause Octave's parser to print a lot of information about the commands it reads, and is probably only useful if you are actually trying to debug the parser.
--echo-commands
-x
Echo commands as they are executed.
--exec-path path
Specify the path to search for programs to run. The value of path specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_EXEC_PATH found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable EXEC_PATH.
--help
-h
-?
Print short help message and exit.
--info-file filename
Specify the name of the info file to use. The value of filename specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_INFO_FILE found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable INFO_FILE.
--info-program program
Specify the name of the info program to use. The value of program specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_INFO_PROGRAM found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable INFO_PROGRAM.
--interactive
-i
Force interactive behavior. This can be useful for running Octave via a remote shell command or inside an Emacs shell buffer. For another way to run Octave within Emacs, see Emacs.
--no-history
-H
Disable command-line history.
--no-init-file
Don't read the ~/.octaverc or .octaverc files.
--no-line-editing
Disable command-line editing.
--no-site-file
Don't read the site-wide octaverc file.
--norc
-f
Don't read any of the system or user initialization files at startup. This is equivalent to using both of the options --no-init-file and --no-site-file.
--path path
-p path
Specify the path to search for function files. The value of path specified on the command line will override any value of OCTAVE_PATH found in the environment, but not any commands in the system or user startup files that set the built-in variable LOADPATH.
--silent
--quiet
-q
Don't print the usual greeting and version message at startup.
--traditional
--braindead
Set initial values for user-preference variables to the following values for compatibility with Matlab. 
            PS1                           = ">> "
            PS2                           = ""
            beep_on_error                 = true
            crash_dumps_octave_core       = false
            default_save_format           = "mat-binary"
            fixed_point_format            = true
            page_screen_output            = false
            print_empty_dimensions        = false
            warn_function_name_clash      = false

--verbose
-V
Turn on verbose output.
--version
-v
Print the program version number and exit.
file
Execute commands from file.

Octave also includes several built-in variables that contain information about the command line, including the number of arguments and all of the options.

— Built-in Variable: argv

The command line arguments passed to Octave are available in this variable. For example, if you invoked Octave using the command 

          octave --no-line-editing --silent

argv would be a cell array of strings with the elements --no-line-editing and --silent.

If you write an executable Octave script, argv will contain the list of arguments passed to the script. See Executable Octave Programs, for an example of how to create an executable Octave script.

— Built-in Variable: program_invocation_name
— Built-in Variable: program_name

When Octave starts, the value of the built-in variable program_invocation_name is automatically set to the name that was typed at the shell prompt to run Octave, and the value of program_name is automatically set to the final component of program_invocation_name. For example, if you typed `/usr/bin/octave' to start Octave, program_invocation_name would have the value "/usr/bin/octave", and program_name would have the value "octave".

If executing a script from the command line (e.g., octave foo.m) or using an executable Octave script, the program name is set to the name of the script. See Executable Octave Programs, for an example of how to create an executable Octave script.

Here is an example of using these variables to reproduce Octave's command line. 

     printf ("%s", program_name);
     for i = 1:nargin
       printf (" %s", nth (argv, i));
     endfor
     printf ("\n");

See Index Expressions, for an explanation of how to properly index arrays of strings and substrings in Octave, and See Defining Functions, for information about the variable nargin.