From bug-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Aug 18 09:55:05 1998
Subject: Re: Request for magic numbers
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: Francesco Potorti` <F dot Potorti at cnuce dot cnr dot it>
Cc: Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd at debian dot org>,         Octave bugs list <bug-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu>
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 09:51:45 -0500 (CDT)

On 18-Aug-1998, Francesco Potorti` <F dot Potorti at cnuce dot cnr dot it> wrote:

| Yes I do  :-) I would have  liked entries for the ascii  files too.  The
| headers I can see are of the form:
| 
| # name: x
| # type: y
| # rows: number
| # columns: number
| 
| so one  could conceivably write  an entry for  them.  Only, I  asked for
| someone  who already  knows what  are the  possible  variations (without
| digging in the source too much).

Data files generated by Octave's save command in the Octave ASCII file
format always start with `# name: ', so I think something like

  0       string          #\ name:      Octave ASCII data

should work in most cases.

But maybe I should modify the format to print another header line that
includes more information.  How about something like

  # This file created by Octave 2.0.14 on Tue Aug 18 09:48:35 1998
  # name: x
  # type: y
  # rows: number
  # columns: number
  ...

?

jwe