Hello,

I would really love to see some comparison between the various matrix
oriented programming languages:

PDL, IDL, Octave, Matlab, NumPy, Scilab,...

I don't really know any of these, and I'd like to understand their pros
and cons a bit better.


* IDL and Matlab are very widely used, but expensive and closed source.

* Matlab has a bazillion toolboxes that PDL and NumPy lack, but PDL
  and NumPy give you a general purpose programming language that can do
  a bazillion things Matlab can't do.

* Octave is highly compatible with Matlab, but it runs on *nix only.

* Scilab, Matlab and IDL are easy to install and have a GUI. So that's
  a point for Scilab as a Matlab/IDL replacement.

* PDL and IDL both have "Data Language" on their name. Does that mean
  they are similar? What is a data language anyway? How does it differ
  from something like Matlab?

* Can anyone comment on speed?

* Can anyone comment on interesting features or missing features in any
  of these?


At a personal level, I'll probably prefer PDL simply because I already
like Perl. But I still want to understand more about the alternatives.

Thanks for your time.

Daniel.

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