request for fread feature

[nit_ar]

Hello Octave developers !

Thanks for your wonderful work.

I have noticed a missing feature in Octave fread in relation to Matlab
fread, whic I think is very useful for reading structured data.

The Octave fread syntax is:

[VAL, COUNT] =3D fread (FID, SIZE, PRECISION, SKIP, ARCH)

Usage of the SKIP parameter is limited for reading a single element
every <SKIP> elements.

Matlab fread has an extra feature with the PRECISION parameter which can
be prefixed buy an integer number multipling the precision spec such
that multiple elemnts can be read every SKIP elements.

For example: PRECISION =3D '10*int16' in Matlab means - reading 10
elements of type int16 and then skiping...

Octave does not have this feature implemented (as far as I have
noticed... up to 2.1.44).

Please consider adding this feature to Octave fread function since it is
very useful for reading structured data.

Thanks
Nitzan Arazi