From bug-octave-request  Thu Jun 17 09:23:04 1993
Subject: scalar arguments
From: hodelas at CONTROLS dot msfc dot nasa dot gov (A. Scott Hodel)
To: bug-octave, hodelas%CONTROLS dot MSFC dot NASA dot GOV at Fedex dot Msfc dot Nasa dot Gov
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 09:31:46 CDT

Octave 0.72, compiled on a Dell 386 station running Unix.

I just started using Octave, for the purpose of evaluating its use in
a group here at MSFC.  I tested the program by porting some Matlab m-files
I had written for a least-squares problem on a sun Sparc-station.  I found
the following behavior:

(1) octave rejects scalar return arguments
        [hv,alpha(1),z] = housh(q,1,0);
must be implemented as
        [hv,av,z] = housh(q,1,0);
        alpha(1) = av;

(2) octave rejects null statements with a semicolon.

i.e., a line containing the single character `;' is rejected by octave.
(The ; was placed there by a global substitute after debugging a routine)

(3) I am occasionally getting the message
        error: caught SIGFPE -- stopping myself...
but in very strange situations where I wouldn't expect a floating point
error (the command that caused this last one was "q"; i.e., print
out the matrix q).  I do not yet have a simple example that causes
the program to fail; I'll pass one along when I find it.