Re: Merging Octave and Octave-Forge?

[David Bateman]

John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 26-Aug-2008, Levente Torok wrote:
>
> | Perheps because Function cov() works differently on matlab and on
> | octave, 
>
> In what way?  Has this been discussed before?
>
> | Alois Schloegl and Matthew W. Roberts replaced the octave version with its own version in 
> | the extra/nan-1.0.6 package.
> | In the installation README file, the authors suggests us to completely overwrite 
> | the original /m/statistics/base/*.m,*.oct files.
> | This can be seen as an obstructive and collabortive act on behalf of 
> octave-forgers.
>
> I think we should discourage people writing packages from replacing
> core functions.  But I don't see that we can stop them from doing it.
>
> Perhaps Octave should warn about duplicate functions in the load-path?
>
> jwe
>
>   
In the case of the NaN toolbox the shadowing makes sense as it allows 
special treatment of NaN values in basic functions like mean and std as 
missing data. Though I agree in general shadowing is a bad idea.

D.


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