How do I run Octave from a different directory? I have recently installed Octave, a MATLAB clone, onto the following directory:  

/Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/bin/octave  


I want to run it from a shell command prompt from a different directory, say, from my home directory ~.  I know that I can type the full path to the octave executable, but that is very cumbersome.  I know that on linux computers you can edit your .bashrc file to include paths to special directories with executables.  How do I accomplish that here in Mac OS?
Edit your .bashrc (or .bash_profile, .login, etc.) on a Mac, and add the line

alias octave='/Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/bin/octave'