Re: 'system': bug or misunderstanding?

[John W. Eaton]

On  5-Jan-2008, clerke wrote:

| On Friday 04 January 2008 22:29:01 John W. Eaton wrote:
| > This is documented, though I suppose not very clearly.  I would
| > welcome a patch that improved the doc string.
| 
| Is system.texi the right file for the patch?

No, the doc string for the system function is in the source file that
defines the system function, src/toplev.cc.

| For example, the description says:
| "To send the output of a command executed with @var{system} through the 
| pager, use a command like
| disp (system (cmd, 1));"
| 
| This doesn't work for me (because system, used like this, returns only the 
| exit status). Examples:

It used to work this way, but we had to change the order of the
outputs for compatibility with Matlab (see the NEWS file).  So the doc
string is wrong now.

| octave:58> disp(system("ls", 1))
| 0
| octave:59> system("ls", 1)
| ans = 0
| 
| In all cases, to get the output returned to octave (rather than stdout) I 
need 
| to specify the second output arg. 
| Is this the way everyone else sees it?

Yes.

jwe