There seems to be a bug in gretl_export and / or mread functions, at least when one uses Octave.
Check the following script:

 foreign language=Octave
  combj = nchoosek(1:6,3)
gretl_export(combj,"combj1.mat");
end foreign
combj1 = mread("@dotdir/combj1.mat")                
combj1

One can retrieve the original matrix by this operation, but I guess that is not intended:

combj2 = mshape(vec(combj1'),rows(combj1),cols(combj1))
combj2


Keep the excellent work.

Andreas