From bug-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Wed Apr 18 09:11:33 2001
Subject: Re: Unidentified subject!
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: Christoph Spiel <cspiel at hammersmith-consulting dot com>
Cc: bug-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 09:11:25 -0500

On 18-Apr-2001, Christoph Spiel <cspiel at hammersmith-consulting dot com> wrote:

| I have made the code a bit clearer by removing the local
| variable 'retval' in define_builtin_const() and define().  No
| change in functionality.  See following cdiff.

Thanks, but I'm not going to apply the patch because I generally
prefer to only have one return in a function unless it is really
clearer to have more than one.

| The only one -- as far as I can see -- to spoil our party is a
| user defining '__error_text__', which introduces the symbol as a
| local variable shadowing the "built-in constant" of the same
| name.  But the problem of shadowing exists with all constants,
| not only with '__error_text__'.

This is true for functions too.  The only difference between "sin"
(for example) and __error_text__ is that names beginning and ending
with "__" are documented to be reserved for internal use by Octave.

jwe



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