Error installing the symbol package

[Simon A. Turner]

Hello everyone

 

I hope I am getting this right as this is my first email to the list and I have never used 1 of these things before. I downloaded Octave in the hope that it would help me solve simultaneous equations for an electrical engineering course I'm doing. I have no knowledge of the backend workings of Octave and no desire to have any knowledge as I'm trying to learn enough things at once as it is. I gather that in order to solve a simultaneous equation I need to install a symbols package. I've downloaded the required package and attempted to install it as per instructions. This is the result I get:

 

>> cd C:

>> pkg install symbolic-2.5.0.tar.gz

Use of uninitialized value in lc at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8/utf8_heavy.pl line 123.

 

I have searched for the error message online and found numerous discussions all of which are complete and utter double Dutch to me. Is there a practical way of resolving this?

 

Kind regards

Simon