port signal processing stuff from matlab?

[Patrick Haggard]

Hi.  I'm completely new to octave, so be gentle...

I've heard that octave is script-compatible with matlab.  I've
been using some routines from an old edu-matlab version of the
SIGNAL PROCESSING TOOLBOX (namely the butter and filtfilt routines)
for smoothing time series data, and they do exactly what I need.
Now I'ld like to see if I can get the same thing working in
octave, so...
 * has anyone ported/rescripted something equivalent to the
SIGNAL PROCESSING TOOLBOX within Octave?
 * are there any other equivalent smoothing / filtering tools
available for octave?`
 * are there any guidelines/FAQs on how to port one's Matlab
scripts to octave?

Thanks
Patrick Haggard --- address@hidden [WORLD] address@hidden [JANET]