From help-octave-request at che dot utexas dot edu  Tue Jan 17 14:24:01 1995
Subject: Re: External editor
From: vdp at us0 dot mayo dot EDU (Vinayak Dutt)
To: help-octave at che dot utexas dot edu
Cc: chris at astri dot uni dot torun dot pl
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 95 14:22:36 CST

#
#Hello !
#
#I have a problem with calling an external editor from within a session
#of octave. If I try to define a command like
#
#    ed = system( "joe", "myfun.m" )
#
#the editor 'joe' hangs the session at the start and I have to kill 
#the process of octave. The same is with vi.
#
#We use octave on SunOS4.1.3 and 5.3, the shell is tcsh.
#

 i don't think system() command will work with interactive processes.
at least it did not work for me either on SunOS4.1.3 using vi. maybe
octave takes over the terminal which vi is unable to take over ??

also the usage should be:

ed = system("joe myfun.m")

but the question, is why do you have to run editor from within octave?

you could very well suspend the octave process with ^Z (control-Z), do
your editing, and then resume octave with command "fg".

(or if you are like working in an X window environment, run editor
is another window all together :-)

--vinayak-
/*
 * vinayak dutt
 * graduate student, ultrasound research
 * mayo graduate school, rochester mn
 *
 * e-mail: vdp at mayo dot edu
 *         dutt dot vinayak at mayo dot edu
 *
 */
#include "disclaimer.h"