From bug-request at octave dot org Tue Apr 11 13:15:34 2006
Subject: Re: 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 14:15:25 -0400

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

| Ah!  I will now go read the documentation to find the real way to
| shorten a cell array.

  x = {1,2,3,4};
  x = x(2:3);

| The assignment should be allowed, I think;

If you write

  x = {1, 2};
  foo (x{:})

it is as if you had written

  foo (x{1}, x{2})

so for consistency, I think

  y = x{:}

should be equivalent to

  y = x{1}, x{2}

This is valid syntax, but would probably result in very confusing
behavior.  It is an accident of Octave's implementation of
comma-separated lists that they can be assigned to a single variable.

jwe



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