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:

1. 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.
2. 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:

fn primes(less_than_n: usize) -> Vec<Vec<f64>> {
    mocktave::eval(                // Start an evaluation
            &format!(              // Format the command
                "x = primes({});", // This is where we call `primes` from Octave
                less_than_n        // Pass through the argument
            )
        )
        .get_matrix("x")           // Extract the results matrix. 
        .unwrap()                  // Unwrap to get the value     
}

let all_primes_less_than_100 = primes(100);

assert_eq!(all_primes_less_than_100, 
           vec![vec![2.0, 3.0, 5.0, 7.0, 11.0, 13.0, 17.0, 19.0, 23.0, 
                     29.0, 31.0, 37.0, 41.0, 43.0, 47.0, 53.0, 59.0, 
                     61.0, 67.0, 71.0, 73.0, 79.0, 83.0, 89.0, 97.0]]);

let primes = mocktave::wrap("primes".into());
let all_primes_less_than_100: Vec<usize> = primes([100]);

assert_eq!(all_primes_less_than_100, vec![2_usize, 3, 5, 7,
    11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37, 41, 43, 47, 53, 59, 61, 67,
    71, 73, 79, 83, 89, 97]);

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.