By default all save operations create version 7 mat files.
Version 7 3 mat file.
The only exception to this is when you create new mat files using the matfile function.
Up through version 7 mat files individual variables are limited to 2gb in size.
Your matlab is r2010a which should be later than v7 3.
Version 7 3 removes this restriction allowing variables to be arbitrarily large.
To identify or change the default mat file version access the mat files preferences.
These files can be read in python using for instance the pytables or h5py package.
March 7 2005 support for memory mapped files.
In this case the default mat file version is 7 3.
If you look at the help of save v7 3 means version 7 0 features plus support for data items greater than or equal to 2gb on 64 bit systems which should be in your advantage.
If when read from the mat file as a 16 bit value the characters appear in reversed order im rather than mi it indicates that the program reading the mat file must.
In this case the default mat file version is 7 3.
The only exception to this is when you create new mat files using the matfile function.
The save variables to version 7 3 mat file example on that page shows the exact syntax.
There are third opensource implementations of v7 3 mat file available so porting this to octave shouldn t require redo this from scratch.
Beginning at release 7 3 of matlab mat files are actually saved using the hdf5 format by default except if you use the vx flag at save time see help save in matlab.
By default all save operations create version 7 mat files.
Also given that the v7 3 mat file is matlab s default and the only one option in matlab that can cope with variables larger than 2gb which is not that much nowadays we some octave users feel that it would be nice if developers could prioritize this.
In order to save your data to a mat file with version 7 3 or later specify the v7 3 flag as the version input argument.
To identify or change the default mat file version access the mat files preferences.
Version when creating a mat file set this field to0x0100.
Matlab 7 1 r14sp3 1 5 0 september 1 2005 first 64 bit version available for windows xp 64 bit matlab 7 2 r2006a 15 1 5 0 2006 march 1 2006 matlab 7 3 r2006b 16 1 5 0 september 1 2006 hdf5 based mat file support matlab 7 4 r2007a 17 1 5 0 07 2007 march 1 2007.