From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Sep  5 18:33:48 1995
Subject: Re: Octave /tmp files 
From: niles at hp5-745 dot gsfc dot nasa dot gov
To: Ted dot Harding at nessie dot mcc dot ac dot uk (Ted Harding)
Cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu, niles@hp5-745.gsfc.nasa.gov
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 95 19:33:02 -0400


>Whenever octave plots something, it creates a file /tmp/oct-[something],
>and this may be quite large. 

>I think it is desirable that some garbage collection should be available
>for these files. Previous ones don't seem to be of the slightest use once
>a new plot has been started.

>From Octave's help -i

`purge_tmp_files'
     Delete the temporary files created by the plotting commands.

     Octave creates temporary data files for `gnuplot' and then sends
     commands to `gnuplot' through a pipe.  Octave will delete the
     temporary files on exit, but if you are doing a lot of plotting
     you may want to clean up in the middle of a session.

     A future version of Octave will eliminate the need to use temporary
     files to hold the plot data.

--------------------- 

Also, the environmental variable TMPDIR is the location where the tmp
files will be placed.  Try setting it to a hard drive partition that
has more space than the one with /tmp.

	Hope this helps,
	Rick Niles.