Codepad++

Abstract

Octave is a high level programming language for numerical computations which is used in both academia and industry (Eaton, 1998). Octave lacks a graphical user interface (GUI) and support as it is a free software. In view of the trend of taking desktop applications online and the current inadequacies of the existing online compilers for Octave, this project aims to develop an online programming environment for Octave.

The project should accept commands from the Octave API and provide output accordingly. The programming environment was implemented primarily using PHP, HTML and Octave. The major task was to integrate Octave and PHP seamlessly while making up for the inadequacies of past work.

In the testing phrase, the project was able to handle a wide variety of Octave commands and provide an output which was similar to running the commands directly from Octave. Therefore, the initial objective of developing an online programming environment for Octave was achieved. In addition, some inadequacies of the existing online compilers were improved upon.

A website (http://yeungyinglai.weebly.com/index.html) was created to document the progress of this project. The source code and the soft copy of this report is available for download there. The project is currently hosted at http://54.251.111.225.