From bug-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Thu Oct 12 05:14:40 1995
Subject: exist doesn't know the builtin variables
From: John Eaton <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: Eyal Doron <doron at goofy dot mpi-hd dot mpg dot de>
cc: bug-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 05:14:40 -0500

Eyal Doron <doron at goofy dot mpi-hd dot mpg dot de> wrote:

: exist returns 0 for the builtin variables. This is a pity because I
: wanted to detect if a routine is running under Octave or Matlab.
: 
: Repeat-By:
: ---------
: 
: octave:33> exist(whitespace_in_literal_matrix)
: ans = 0

You need to give exist the name of the variable as a string:

  exist ("OCTAVE_VERSION")

should return 1.

jwe