From bug-octave-request at che dot utexas dot edu  Tue May 31 18:34:54 1994
From: Frederick (Rick) A Niles <niles at axp745 dot gsfc dot nasa dot gov>
To: bug-octave at che dot utexas dot edu
Date: Tue, 31 May 1994 19:34:50 -0400

	     Desirable Matlab features missing in Octave.

These are some things I've come across that seem to be missing
from Octave.  I am new to this program and may have missed equivalent
commands and/or syntax.  These are only suggestions, let it be known I
think your program is quite excellent.

In order of importance to myself:

1) octave_path like matlab_path for user defined *.m files. So they
      don't all have to be in the current directory. Perhaps a
      ~/.octave file would be appropriate.  This is a big problem
      for me.  What is the current work around?  Move all user files
      to /usr/local/lib/octave/1.0 ?

2) Optional parameters for functions. e.g.
	function out=tester(in, a)
	if(~exist('a')),a=1,end
	a
	out =1;
   The idea is that a is an optional parameter with a default value.
   Octave will report this as: 'a' undefined near line 3 column 1.
   Maybe "exist" and defined are different?
   Should they be in this context?

3) "load" of plain ASCII data files as one large array or group of vectors.
      (I've written a .m file for this but it is extremely slow for
       large (6 col, 5000 row) files.) This would fall under:
	  * Make load work for files saved by Matlab.

4) Why not alias 'whos' to 'who -l' for us Matlab users?

In addition, why can't one index arrays of characters, like C?
	a = "apple"
	then a(2) is --> 'p'

	Sincerely,

	Rick Niles
	5/31/94