From owner-help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Sun Dec  1 22:08:29 1996
Subject: Re: Feature, not bug
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
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
Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 22:08:05 -0600

On 28-Nov-1996, Ted Harding <Ted dot Harding at nessie dot mcc dot ac dot uk> wrote:

: It DOES occur if you do it using the name of a function (user-defined or
: built-in):
: 
:     octave:10> erf.oct
:     erf.oct =
: 
:     panic: impossible state reached in file `tc-rep.cc' at line 1764
:     error: IOT trap/Abort -- stopping myself...
: 
: So I guess that Heber had a function "non2" which generated data that he
: saved to "non2.oct". The mishap, therefore, seems to be due to how octave
: handles attempts to address structure members of functions. Given the
: error message ("impossible state ... "), this suggests an unforeseen
: case of parsing error.

In any case, this problem appears to be fixed in the current sources:

  octave:1> erf.oct
  error: can't perform structure reference operations for <unknown type> type
  error: evaluating expression

Thanks,

jwe