Re: Cell array changes for Octave

[Paul Kienzle]

On Tue, May 07, 2002 at 11:09:19AM -0500, John W. Eaton wrote:
> On  7-May-2002, A Scottedward Hodel <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> | lists are used in my octave "legacy" code.  Sure, I could rewrite it, but
> | backward compatibility would be a nice feature to keep, if at all possible.
> 
> I agree that breaking backward compatibility is not the best thing,
> but I'd also prefer to avoid having a lot of redundant code in Octave
> that is there just to support some old way of doing things.
> 
> In this particular case, I think all the list functions (list, nth,
> append, reverse, and splice) can be rewritten as M-files that use
> cell arrays.

Agreed.  However you will run into a problem is with x(i) = k where x is a
list, as in:

        x = list(1,2,3);
        x(2) = list('a')

which in octave produces:

x =
(
  [1] = 1
  [2] =
  (
    [1] = a
  )
  [3] = 3
)

but cell-array equivalent:

        x = { 1,2,3 };
        x(2) = { 'a' }

for compatibility should produce:

x = 

    [1]    'a'    [3]

So either we break backward compatibility or
matlab compatibility (or both ;-), or we suffer
under a flood of cruft.

If lists are made a separately installable type then the
cruft is more manageable, at least within the core octave.

Paul Kienzle
address@hidden