Scilab

Getting Scilab for home use

Scilab is free. You can download binaries for Mac, Windows, and many flavors of Unix from the Scilab page at INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique).

Matlab-like plotting under scilab

If you like doing Matlab-like things such as xlabel('x axis') then you'll want to install Stephane Mottelet's package.

Using Scilab on the SGI cluster

The directory /usr/local/scilab-2.6/bin must be in your path. If you are using cshell, then you put this in your .cshrc file. For example, my .cshrc file ends with the following:

set my_path = (. ~/bin /usr/local/TeX/bin /usr/local/bin /usr/local/scilab-2.6/bin)
set win_path = (/usr/bin/X11)
set unix_path = (/usr/bsd /bin /usr/bin /usr/sbin)
set etc_path = (/etc /usr/etc /usr/local/etc)
set path = ($unix_path $my_path $win_path $etc_path )

Getting started

Once you've fixed your path, type scilab at a unix prompt and the scilab window will appear. The scilab prompt is

-->

You can get out of scilab by typing quit at the prompt, followed enter, or you can click on the file menu.

complete examples

vsp

stick these three matlab files in a directory

makejacobian.sci
maketimes.sci
vspdemo.sci

Then either 1) type exec("vspdemo.sci") from the scilab prompt or 2) pull down the file menu, click file operations, select the vspdemo.sci file, and click exec.

tides

You'll need this scilab file

judah.sci
and this data file
judahlevine.txt
These data are courtesy of Dr. Judah Levine of University of Colorado and NIST.

Exercise 1

Click here to see the exercise for Thursday, 27 September.

Exercises 2 and 3

Click here to see the exercise for Tuesday, 16 October.

Exercises 4

Click here to see the exercise for Thursday, November 11.