Octave saves variable in Matlab format in large size

[Ge Baolai]

Hi,

Just noticed that variables saved with '-mat-binary' option in Octave
result in larger file size than Matlab's. For example,

In Matlab (ver. 7.0)
z = zeros(5000,999,3);
save 'z.mat' z
generates a file of size 53K bytes, which seems to contain only a
minimum data.

While in Octave, the command
z = zeros(5000,999,3);
save '-mat-binary' z.mat z
results in a file of size 119,880,208 bytes, the full size of 5000 x 999 x 3
doubles.

Any comments?

Thanks,
Ge Baolai