### 2.1 Invoking Octave

Normally, Octave is used interactively by running the program ``octave`' without any arguments. Once started, Octave reads commands from the terminal until you tell it to exit.

You can also specify the name of a file on the command line, and Octave will read and execute the commands from the named file and then exit when it is finished.

You can further control how Octave starts by using the command-line options described in the next section, and Octave itself can remind you of the options available. Type ``octave --help`' to display all available options and briefly describe their use (``octave -h`' is a shorter equivalent).