Re: help on matlab-octave porting

[David Bateman]

Shuaizhang Feng wrote:
> Hi 
> 
> A friend of mine needs to port his matlab code into
> octave and would like to get some help.  The difficult
> part concerns to matlab built-in functions: fmincon
> and hypergeom.  If you think you can help, please
> contact him directly at address@hidden  He is
> willing to pay for this.
> 
> thanks.
> 
> sz
> 
> 

Hypergeom is a symbolic toolbox function. Basically, if an integration
can't give any useful answer, it gives a solution in terms of
hypergeomtric functions (horribly unstable beasts). So if a symbolic
version of this function is what you really want maybe you should be
asking yourself if octave or in fact even matlab is what you really want
to use. It seems that a Maple, mathematica or the open source maxima
programs are more apprpriate than matlab. If you want a numerical result
of the evaluation of a hypergeometric function, then gsl and the octave
bindings to GSL have this (see hyperg_OF1 function of octave-forge)

As for fmincon, yes octave doesn't have it, and if you convince some one
to write it, having a constrained minimization function would be useful..

D.