initializing multi dimensional arrays in octave

In octave, multi dimensional arrays can be initialized using the reshape function. As an example, consider the following script.

$cat multidimensional_array.m
1;
a = zeros(1, 24);
for i=1:24
  a(i) = i;
end
a
b = reshape(a, [4 3 2])

The output looks as follows

$octave -q
octave:1> multidimensional_array
a =

 Columns 1 through 16:

    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8    9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16

 Columns 17 through 24:

   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24

b =

ans(:,:,1) =

    1    5    9
    2    6   10
    3    7   11
    4    8   12

ans(:,:,2) =

   13   17   21
   14   18   22
   15   19   23
   16   20   24



octave:2>