Re: Octave/Matlab gcc front end?

[CASE Research student BAe]

> I've seen many engineers spending lots of time converting large
> Matlab/Octave m-files into C or Ada code to make them run faster.

> As just as an idea, would it be possable to make an Octave front end
> for gcc so you could compile your matlab functions?  Would it
> improve preformance significantly?  I would think so if there are many
> for loops.  In a way this is a variation of the MEX-file concept, but
> in this way your m-file could be independent programs.

At the moment I'm still a "mostly Matlab" user, rather than Octave user.
I've been using Matlab and cmex with the Fortran NAG Libraries to do
some nasty integrations for some statistical modelling work. This is
all fine at University where we have Matlab & NAG site-lisenced, but
I've been looking for a replacement for this set-up at home. Sometimes
I do use Octave for simple jobs on my Linux box at home, but it's
always seemed a bit of a shame not to have some lower-level way of
writing programs to be callable from octave's command line.

I do like the MEX philosophy, but there again, maybe I've been using matlab
just too long...

Will.