Octave includes support for single precision data types, and most of the
functions in Octave accept single precision values and return single
precision answers.  A single precision variable is created with the
single function.
   
for example:
     sngl = single (rand (2, 2))
          ⇒ sngl =
             0.37569   0.92982
             0.11962   0.50876
     class (sngl)
         ⇒ single
   Many functions can also return single precision values directly. For example
     ones (2, 2, "single")
     zeros (2, 2, "single")
     eye (2, 2,  "single")
     rand (2, 2, "single")
     NaN (2, 2, "single")
     NA (2, 2, "single")
     Inf (2, 2, "single")
   will all return single precision matrices.