From bug-octave-request at che dot utexas dot edu  Wed Nov  9 12:34:04 1994
Subject: Not exactly a buf but...
From: wdoyle at cdsp dot neu dot edu (Patrick Doyle)
To: bug-octave at che dot utexas dot edu
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 1994 13:16:54 -0500 (EST)

	I just retrieved octave-1.0 from ftp.che.utexas.edu and
proceeded to try it out on an existing body of MATLAB code that I have
inherited.  I found the following difference in behavior between
OCTAVE and MATLAB: int2str(5) returns "5.0000\n" in OCTAVE.  In MATLAB,
it returns "5" (with no newline).  There is a trivial modification to
scripts/int2str.m to change this.  Simply change the "%f\n" in the
sprintf string to a "%d".

	I also have a few other questions regarding OCTAVE.  If this is
not the correct forum in which to ask, please let me know.  Also, if
there is a mailing list or newsgroup (other than the matlab group),
would you please let me know.

1) Is there a reason (possibly copyright related) that you do not
support reading and writing .mat files?  It seems to me that it should
be relatively straightforward to integrate the procedures distributed
by The MathWorks, Inc. into OCTAVE.  If nothing else, I seem to recall
that they publish the specification for the format for the files, so a
"drop in" substitute for the code distributed with MATLAB should be
reasonably easy to write.  I know that the ASCII files have the
advantage of processor/byte-order independence, but it might be nice
to be able to read and write binary files on a single processor.

2)	Is there some other way to access individual bytes in a string
variable other than via array indexing (which appears to have been
deliberately disabled in tree-const.cc (within
tree_constant_rep::eval()).  In MATLAB, I can:
	>> x='abc';
	>> x(1)

	ans =

	a
... but in OCTAVE, when I try to reference x(1), I receive a "string
constant used in invalid context" error.

3)	Is there a freely distributable replacement for the Signal
Processing Toolbox distributed with MATLAB?  Specifically, I am
looking for decimate() and interpolate(), but I'm sure I'll run into
other missing functions shortly.

4)	What is the genealogy of the name OCTAVE?

	Again, I apologise if this is not the right place to post
these questions.  I _do_ appreciate the work you have done in
developing OCTAVE and I would much prefer to be able to use it under
Linux than to have to switch back and forth between MATLAB/WINDOWS and
Linux in order to work on my current project.  (Basically, I will be
transating a lot of MATLAB code used in a simulation into C code used
in an embedded DSP).  Thank for your time.

-- 
-patrick
wdoyle at cdsp dot neu dot edu

Happiness is a Star Trek rerun I've never seen before.