From help-octave-request at che dot utexas dot edu  Wed Jan 18 14:28:02 1995
Subject: Re: I and J variables 
From: John Eaton <jwe at che dot utexas dot edu>
To: Eyal Doron <doron at mickey dot mpi-hd dot mpg dot de>
cc: help-octave at che dot utexas dot edu (Octave mailing list)
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 95 14:27:52 CST

Eyal Doron <doron at mickey dot mpi-hd dot mpg dot de> wrote:

:    I know its a feature, but IMHO its an irritating one. I and J are
: defined as sqrt(-1), like i and j, except that they are read-only
: and can't be changed. This is playing havoc with some of my MATLAB
: functions, which usually use I as an index vector and J as a bessel
: function vector. I know its trivial to fix my files, but its
: bothersome nevertheless. Is there any way to remove this feature?

There is currently no way to avoid this problem.

I will add this to the list of things to look at for 1.2.  To make it
work right (including things like ensuring reasonable behavior if
someone makes `I' global and then changes its value) requires too many
changes to consider it for a 1.1.x release.

Thanks,

jwe