The study of differential equations requires good and powerful mathematical software. Also, a flexible and extendible package is important. A powerful and widely used environment for scientific computing is Matlab. The aim of MatCont and Cl_MatCont is to provide a continuation and bifurcation toolbox which is compatible with the standard Matlab ODE representation of differential equations. 

MatCont is a graphical Matlab package for the interactive numerical study of dynamical systems. It is developed in parallel with the command line continuation toolbox Cl_MatCont. The package (Cl_)MatCont is freely available for non-commercial use on an as is basis. It should never be sold as part of some other software product. Also, in no circumstances can the authors be held liable for any deficiency, fault or other mishappening with regard to the use or performance of (Cl_)MatCont.

The following actions are supported by the present version of MatCont and Cl_MatCont:

• continuation of equilibrium and periodic solutions with respect to a control parameter; 
• computation of phase response curves and their derivatives for periodic solutions;
• detection of fold, Hopf and branching points on curves of equilibria; 
• computation of normal form coefficients for fold and Hopf equilibrium bifurcations; 
• continuation of fold and Hopf equilibrium bifurcations in two control parameters; 
• detection of all codim 2 equilibrium bifurcations (cusp, Bogdanov-Takens, generalized Hopf, zero-Hopf, and double Hopf) on fold and Hopf curves;
• computation of normal form coefficients for  all codim 2 equilibrium bifurcations; 
• detection of branch bifurcation points on fold curves;
• continuation of branching equilibria in three control parameters;
• detection of flip, fold, torus and branch bifurcations of periodic solutions;
• computation of normal form coefficients for bifurcations of periodic solutions; 
• continuation of flip, fold and torus bifurcations of periodic solutions in two control parameters;
• detection of several codim 2 bifurcations of periodic solutions on fold, flip and torus bifurcation curves;
• switching to the period doubled branch in a flip point;
• branch switching at branch points of equilibria and limit cycles;
• continuation of branching periodic solutions in three control parameters;
• continuation of orbits homoclinic to a hyperbolic saddle;
• continuation of orbits homoclinic to a saddle-node.

• makes the Matlab ODEsuite for time integration interactively available;
• can use the Matlab Symbolic Toolbox for computing derivatives whenever it is installed.
• maintains archive of computed curves;
• user functions can be added;
• on-line help function is implemented; 
• Jacobian matrices of defining functions for periodic orbits and their bifurcations are programed  as C-codes which are compiled using the Matlab built-in compiler to increase speed.

The following actions are supported by the present version of Cl_MatCont_for_maps:

• continuation of fixed points of maps and iterates of maps with respect to a control parameter;
• detection of fold, flip, Neimark-Sacker and branch points on curves of fixed points;
• computation of normal form coefficients for fold, flip and Neimark-Sacker bifurcations;
• continuation of fold, flip and Neimark-Sacker bifurcations in two control parameters;
• detection of all eleven codim 2 fixed point bifurcations on curves of fold, flip and Neimark-Sacker bifurcations;
• computation of normal form coefficients for all codim 2 bifurcations of fixed points;
• switching to the period doubled branch in a flip point;
• branch switching at branch points of fixed points;
• switching to branches of codim 1 bifurcations rooted in codim 2 points.