From bug-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Fri Jan 28 12:13:13 2000
Subject: Re: fscanf
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: Octave bugs list <bug-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2000 12:13:34 -0600 (CST)

On 28-Jan-2000, Francesco Potorti` <F dot Potorti at cnuce dot cnr dot it> wrote:

|    | I  am not  wrong, there is   no way to  tell  how many parameters  a fscanf
|    | function call has read, when the "C"  argument is used.   This is a serious
|    | shortcoming.
|    
|    Hmm.  Any ideas about how should this be fixed?
| 
| Just add one more returned value, which is the number of items that have
| been read:
| 
| [V1, V2, ..., COUNT] =  sscanf (STRING, TEMPLATE, "C")

OK, for some reason (brain failure) I was thinking that this wouldn't
work, but I suppose it will, provided that the number of conversions
matches the number of `Vn' output arguments.  If it doesn't,
you probably have a bug anway.

I was actually thinking that it would be much nicer to have sscanf
return a list of values (then you could just get the length of the
list to see how many conversions happened).  I don't really want to
make a backwardly incompatible change, but would add it as another
alternative ("CL" instead of "C", I suppose) if there is sufficient
interest.

Thanks,

jwe



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