Access Octave/MATLAB from Rust
As much as I hate to say it, there is a lot of useful code living in .m files. Sometimes it can be nice to access that code through Rust. There are at least two use cases I can think of:
- Rapid Development: There might be a simple function in Octave that would require significant development effort to replicate in Rust. This crate serves as a stopgap measure to enable further development.
- Robust Testing: We all know that the better option is to rewrite those nasty .m files in Rust so they're 🚀Blazingly Fast™️🚀! This create is still useful for testing purposes, allowing direction comparison to legacy Octave/MATLAB code.
Requirements
This crate uses a disgusting hack: Octave is run in the background in Docker. For that reason, you must have a working installation of Docker.
Example Usage
Let's say we need a function to compute prime numbers, but we're too lazy to write one ourselves. Let's make a thin
wrapper around the Octave primes
function! That function will look like this:
But hey, let's say we're even lazier! We love shortcuts around here:
let all_primes_less_than_100 = primes;
assert_eq!;
let primes = wrap;
let all_primes_less_than_100: = primes;
assert_eq!;
Its important to note that this function is definitely NOT 🚀Blazingly Fast™️🚀, since it starts, runs, and closes a Docker container every time its run.