Re: Speed up startup of octave

[Paul]

Francesco Potortì <Potorti <at> isti.cnr.it> writes:
>> I am constantly shelling out of a text editor (vim) to pipe text
>> into octave.  But octave takes seconds to launch each time.  Is
>> there a way to speed it up?
>> 
>> As a nonideal solution, I can keep a command line window open with
>> an interactive octave session constantly running, then use it to
>> repeatedly source a script for which I have a separate edit session
>> constantly open.
> 
> Why you call your solution "nonideal"?  I think it is by far the
> most straightforward and commonly used one.  I definitely recommend
> it, unless you go for more complex setups (I use Emacs, where I edit
> the file in a buffer, and un Octave in a different one).

Yes, that's the way I've done it for decades, using octave and other 
environments.  However, it's a much quicker grab data from another app, use 
it to form expressions in vim, send the on-the-fly expression to octave via 
a shell out, and have the results plunked automagically show up in the vim 
session for me to properly format/mutilate in preparation to transplant to 
yet other apps.  I want it to be a tight iteration without mousing around 
to cut and paste.

>> can have a second edit session open for the output of the repeatedly 
sourced
>> script.  This is way less convenient than simply shelling out of a single
>> edit session, without having to use an extra window for octave.
> 
> Normal window emulators allow you to go back and look at the previous
> output, so for simple tasks you do not need a new session of vi.  Also,
> Octave by default pages its output, so as far as the current command
> output is concerned, you can just use the pager.

Yes, as I said, that's how I use to do things, and still do when it is 
beneficial.  The method I describe above is much more suitable for many 
circumstances.

> For more sophisticated needs, I'd recommend Emacs or something similar
> (maybe Eclipse can do most of this).

Both Emacs, Vim, and others are high powered editors with many 
capabilities.  But to fully exploit them require more than just causal 
familiarity.  At this point, considering that I'm not just dealing with 
octave from the vim session, the benefit just doesn't outweight the highly 
nontrivial cost.  That's also assuming that time permits, and often, it's 
not an option.

This basically leaves the situation that if there was a quick win in 
speeding up octave startup, I'd take it, but getting into another editor 
(really, an IDE) is not an alternative I'd seek (fully acknowledging the 
power of the alternatives, however).