(octave.info)Startup Files

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2.1.2 Startup Files
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When Octave starts, it looks for commands to execute from the files in
the following list.  These files may contain any valid Octave commands,
including function definitions.

‘OCTAVE-HOME/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc’
     where OCTAVE-HOME is the directory in which Octave is installed
     (the default is ‘/usr/local’).  This file is provided so that
     changes to the default Octave environment can be made globally for
     all users at your site for all versions of Octave you have
     installed.  Care should be taken when making changes to this file
     since all users of Octave at your site will be affected.  The
     default file may be overridden by the environment variable
     ‘OCTAVE_SITE_INITFILE’.

‘OCTAVE-HOME/share/octave/VERSION/m/startup/octaverc’
     where OCTAVE-HOME is the directory in which Octave is installed
     (the default is ‘/usr/local’), and VERSION is the version number of
     Octave.  This file is provided so that changes to the default
     Octave environment can be made globally for all users of a
     particular version of Octave.  Care should be taken when making
     changes to this file since all users of Octave at your site will be
     affected.  The default file may be overridden by the environment
     variable ‘OCTAVE_VERSION_INITFILE’.

‘~/.octaverc’
     This file is used to make personal changes to the default Octave
     environment.

‘.octaverc’
     This file can be used to make changes to the default Octave
     environment for a particular project.  Octave searches for this
     file in the current directory after it reads ‘~/.octaverc’.  Any
     use of the ‘cd’ command in the ‘~/.octaverc’ file will affect the
     directory where Octave searches for ‘.octaverc’.

     If you start Octave in your home directory, commands from the file
     ‘~/.octaverc’ will only be executed once.

‘startup.m’
     This file is used to make personal changes to the default Octave
     environment.  It is executed for MATLAB compatibility, but
     ‘~/.octaverc’ is the preferred location for configuration changes.

   A message will be displayed as each of the startup files is read if
you invoke Octave with the ‘--verbose’ option but without the ‘--silent’
option.