Manual Scilab

www.scilab.org

INTRODUCTION TO SCILAB

Consortium sCilab
Domaine de Voluceau - Rocquencourt - B.P. 105 - 78153 Le Chesnay Cedex France

Introduction to Scilab
Micha¨l Baudin e September 2011
Abstract In this document, we make an overview of Scilab features so that we can get familiar with this environment. The goal is to present the core of skills necessary to start with Scilab. In thefirst part, we present how to get and install this software on our computer. We also present how to get some help with the provided in-line documentation and also thanks to web resources and forums. In the remaining sections, we present the Scilab language, especially its structured programming features. We present an important feature of Scilab, that is the management of real matrices. Thedefinition of functions and the elementary management of input and output variables is presented. We present Scilab’s graphical features and show how to create a 2D plot, how to configure the title and the legend and how to export that plot into a vectorial or bitmap format.

Contents
1 Overview 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Overview of Scilab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3How to get and install Scilab . . . . . . . . . 1.3.1 Installing Scilab under Windows . . . 1.3.2 Installing Scilab under Linux . . . . 1.3.3 Installing Scilab under Mac OS . . . 1.4 How to get help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 Mailing lists, wiki and bug reports . . . . . . 1.6 Getting help from Scilab demonstrations and 1.7 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Getting started2.1 The console . . . . . . . 2.2 The editor . . . . . . . . 2.3 Docking . . . . . . . . . 2.4 The variable browser and 2.5 Using exec . . . . . . . 2.6 Batch processing . . . . 2.7 Localization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . macros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 . 5 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 7 . 8 . 8 . 9 . 10 . 11 11 11 13 14 16 18 20 22

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ATOMS, the packaging system of Scilab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 27 28 28 29 29 30 31 31 32 33 33 34 35 36 37 37 37 38 39 39 40 41 41 42 43 46 46 47 48 49 50 51 51 52 54 5656 57 57 59 60 61

3 Basic elements of the language 3.1 Creating real variables . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Variable names . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Comments and continuation lines . . . 3.4 Elementary mathematical functions . . 3.5 Pre-defined mathematical variables . . 3.6 Booleans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Complex numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 Integers . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 3.8.1 Overview of integers . . . . . . 3.8.2 Conversions between integers . 3.8.3 Circular integers and portability 3.9 Floating point integers . . . . . . . . . 3.10 The ans variable . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.11 Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.12 Dynamic type of variables . . . . . . . 3.13 Notes and references . . . . . . . . . . 3.14 Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . 4 Matrices 4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Create a matrix of real values . . . . . 4.3 The empty matrix [] . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Query matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 Accessing the elements of a matrix . . 4.6 The colon ”:” operator . . . . . . . . . 4.7 The eye matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.8 Matrices are dynamic . . . . . . . . . . 4.9 The dollar ”$”...