FreeMat

FreeMat is a comprehensive piece of software designed to work as a development environment, similar to MATLAB or IDL, yet with none of the entailed costs.

Subsequent to the download process, you can just run the installer then create your path using the ‘Pathtool’; while it may sound simple enough, you do need some experience in the field in order to successfully accomplish the task.

The code build is more complicated and requires advanced knowledge, but you are provided with extensive documentation material on the subject.

FreeMat displays a sufficiently basic interface, featuring a working window and several panels, for instance ‘File Browser’, ‘History’, ‘Variables’ or ‘Debug’.

The toolbar offers quick access to the main functions and components, allowing you to choose the ‘Stack’ you want to use or the system drive, from the corresponding menus.

FreeMat allows you to open an existing M file or create a new one, with just a button press. You can then input the contents of the file and resort to the program’s context menu to cut, copy, paste, find and replace items from the document.

You can run debugging operations, comment or uncomment a region, execute the current buffer, as well as perform ‘Step Over’ and ‘Step Into’ tasks. Similarly, you can set or clear a breakpoint. These functions are also accessible from the toolbar or the upper menus.

To sum it up, FreeMat is a complex and efficient application aimed to serve as a matrix-oriented development environment that supports a variety of processing functions, being able to work with shared libraries from several different languages.