There are two distinct classes of input and output functions. The first set are modeled after the functions available in MATLAB. The second set are modeled after the standard I/O library used by the C programming language and offer more flexibility and control over the output.
When running interactively Octave normally sends any output intended
for your terminal that is more than one screen long to a paging program
such as less or more. This avoids the problem of having a
large volume of output stream by before you can read it. With
less (and some versions of more) you can also scan forward
and backward and search for specific items.
Normally no output is displayed by the pager until just before Octave
is ready to print the top level prompt or read from the standard input
(for example by using the fscanf or scanf functions).
This means that there may be some delay before any output appears on
your screen if you have asked Octave to perform a significant amount of
work with a single command statement. The function fflush may be
used to force output to be sent to the pager (or any other stream)
immediately.
You can select the program to run as the pager by setting the variable
PAGER and you can turn paging off by setting the value of the
variable page_screen_output to 0.
| more | Command |
| more on | Command |
| more off | Command |
Turn output pagination on or off. Without an argument more
toggles the current state.
|
| PAGER | Built-in Variable |
The default value is normally "less" "more", or
"pg" depending on what programs are installed on your system.
See Installation.
When running interactively Octave sends any output intended for your
terminal that is more than one screen long to the program named by the
value of the variable |
| page_screen_output | Built-in Variable |
If the value of page_screen_output is nonzero all output
intended for the screen that is longer than one page is sent through a
pager. This allows you to view one screenful at a time. Some pagers
(such as less--see Installation) are also capable of moving
backward on the output. The default value is 1.
|
| page_output_immediately | Built-in Variable |
If the value of page_output_immediately is nonzero Octave sends
output to the pager as soon as it is available. Otherwise Octave
buffers its output and waits until just before the prompt is printed to
flush it to the pager. The default value is 0.
|
| fflush (fid) | Built-in Function |
Flush output to fid. This is useful for ensuring that all
pending output makes it to the screen before some other event occurs.
For example it is always a good idea to flush the standard output
stream before calling input.
|