So you want a feature comparison? Obviously it would be nice if we had a chart comparing Matlab and PDL features. However, it becomes a murky discussion, because at some point Matlab starts tackling problems that are clearly outside of PDL's problem-domain, like symbolic math (but see Steffen Müller's Math::Symbolic package). On the other hand, Perl is a general systems programming language and has WAY more features than Matlab, and at which point do you stop? We could go down CPAN and compile a never-ending feature list that Matlab couldn't match.
In case somebody provokes a pissing contest, you could retort thus: Would you write a general test suite using Matlab? Would you ever use Matlab to analyze server log files, or to scrape an Outlook folder, or analyze a collection of documents on the Web? Would you generate a fully-formed Powerpoint Presentation using Matlab? Would you generate a PDF summarizing your results? Could you make a web page using Matlab that could compete with Catalyst? Notice I didn't say 'Could you...', I said 'Would you...' All of these problems - many of which could possilby benefit from numerical capabilities - are easily possible in Perl, but I don't think anybody would try them in Matlab, except maybe the PDF bit. Maybe. I'm sure we could compile an even more impressive list of Perl (and therefore PDL) features. Ultimately, our silver bullets in the feature war are real features that we have and Matlab doesn't: dataflow and PDL::PP. Do you know what you have to do to link to C code in Matlab? You have to create a separate .dll file! Never mind PDL-like threading. And the closest thing you can get to data-flow is carrying around an array of indices for the data that you intend to modify. After all, Slatec, GSL, OpenGL, PLplot, and PGPLOT will solve 99% of most user's daily needs, and Perl and CPAN will solve many needs that Matlab users didn't realize they had. It may take the user a lot of work to get them up and running, but once in place they're great tools that can compete with much of what Matlab has to offer. David
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