Some simple way to connect Scilab

Now, we are not talking about including a toolbox of Scilab or translating some toolbox of another vectorial package but about using external packages that can be open source or not. We do not necessarily know the source code of the programs and, even if we know it, we have decided that we are not going to face the difficult task of incorporating C or Fortran functions to Scilab. The approach of this tutorial is a very simple one:

• we call the functions from the operating system, and where possible from inside Scilab
• we store the result of the external processing in Scilab variables directly or by converting them from ASCII files
• we store Scilab variables as ASCII files to allow the processing with other packages
• when possible, we process the ASCII files from inside Scilab trying to eliminate the learning of other programs (not necessarily simple).

Obviously this approach can not be used for all the existing packages. Some of them have graphic interfaces not accessible from the operating system, others do not allow exporting data in ASCII format or any other detailed format and some others even do not allow the archiving of intermediate results. However, we will show some examples trying to explain how this practice can be advantageous.