Re: operation x=x(:)

[Ted Harding]

On 06-May-99 John Logsdon wrote:
> On Wed, 5 May 1999, John W. Eaton wrote:
> 
> I thought to get close to Matlab compatability you *had* to have
> do_fortran_indexing set to 1 (best in .octaverc)
> 
>> Perhaps this could be `fixed' for 2.1.x so that it always does the
>> Matlab-compatible thing.  Does anyone have a strong opinion either
>> way?
>> 
> 
> It is already, surely.  I see no need as there may be code out there
> that
> uses the opposite sense with do_fortran_indexing=0
> 
>> Thanks,
>> 
>> jwe

I'm inclined to agree with John Logsdon on this one.

However, I think the following would be really useful.

It has never been really clear what you need to set if you want, for
whatever reason, MatLab compatibility (interoperability with MatLab
users being a compelling reason).

Maybe the whole thing could be wrapped up in an option

"matlab_compatibility = 1"

which overrides everything else that would be ML-incompatible,
while if you set it "= 0" then you can set any of these other options
to be what you like.

And it would be desirable if "= 1" made it really compatible, modulo
non-implemented MatLab functions -- I'm really thinking about things like
the "x(:)" issue (though I deeply appreciate that it can be decidedly
non-trivial to set one package up to be totally compatible with another,
especially since this can, in the long term, involve you in
"feature-tracking" when you may have better things to do). I'm also aware
that there are things you can do in octave which are simply not in
MatLab, but this issue should not be a problem where writing/running code
that should run on either is concerned.

There are enough people with a foot in each camp to make compatibility a
serious issue.

Best wishes, and as always: thanks to John Eaton.
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
Date: 06-May-99                                       Time: 09:44:51
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