The MathWorks, Inc. [http://www.mathworks.com/]
styles MATLAB
[http://www.mathworks.com/products/]
as "the language of technical computing".  MathWorks is an interesting
company; it continued to hire programmers all through 2002 and at
least the beginning of 2003, despite the general depression in [IT].



The quickest, lightest way to get [Tcl] and MATLAB talking is
through [DDE].  MATLAB also exposes a [COM] interface that
permits essentially fully general control, although it's documented
with as much mystery as seems to be canonical with COM.  Paul
McGuire has documented his experience in COM control
[http://www.geocities.com/ptmcg/python/using_matlab_from_python.html]
with [Python]; most of this knowledge translates easily to Tcl.

[TMath] and [TCL-MAT] both bind Tcl and MATLAB.





[Octave] is an open-source replacement for MATLAB.








Perhaps [NAP] is also of interest.


[[Link to article on Open Source vs. proprietary for scientists,
available through
[http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.programming/open_source_science.html].]]