Naming conventions for statistical distribution functions

[Rik]

12/12/10

John,

One of the undocumented functions is the stdnormal distribution which has
m-files which use an underscore between the base name and the particular
distribution (stdnormal_pdf, stdnormal_cdf, etc.).  The Matlab convention
is to run everything together so that, for example, the exponential
probability distribution is exppdf.  Octave has adopted that convention
where we have functions that overlap with those of Matlab.  Do we also want
to follow that convention for our own extensions?  For exampe, cauchy_cdf
would become cauchycdf.  The pro argument is that it is clearer to have
only one naming convention for all of the distribution functions.  A
possible con argument is that it may be useful to quickly distinguish
between Octave additions and core Matlab functions.  Having one naming
convention might also reduce coding (See your recent patch
11335:db091f68798c allow kolmogorov_smirnov_test to work with either
DIST_cdf or DISTcdf functions).

--Rik