From bug-request at octave dot org Tue Apr 11 13:00:10 2006
Subject: unexpected help
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: tomh at kurage dot nimh dot nih dot gov
Cc: bug at octave dot org
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:59:48 -0400

On 11-Apr-2006, Tom Holroyd (NIH/NIMH) [E] wrote:

| ... reading in a large dataset ... with 2.9.5+ dated april 2 ...
| 
| octave:19> length(data.trial)
| ans = 478
| octave:20> length(data.trial)/2
| ans = 239
| octave:21> data.trial = data.trial{1:length(data.trial)/2};

This is the real source of the error.  At this point, data.trial is a
"comma-separated list".  We should probably not allow this assignment
to happen, so you should have seen an error here.  But the assignment
did work, so the next statement

| octave:22> length(data.trial)

is actually passing 1:length(data.trial)/2 separate arguments to
length.  That's a usage error, so you get the help.  To clarify that
this is a usage error, I'll see if I can arrange for print_usage to
begin with something like

  error: invalid usage of length:

instead of just

  *** length:

jwe



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------