From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Oct 14 19:45:38 1997
Subject: Re: Loading of Matlab 5 Files
From: Andres Weingessel <Andreas dot Weingessel at ci dot tuwien dot ac dot at>
To: Martin Holz <holz at zib dot de>
CC: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 10:44:12 +1000

>>>>> On 14 Oct 1997 10:30:22 +0200,
>>>>> Martin Holz (MH) wrote:

MH> Andreas dot Weingessel at keating dot anu dot edu dot au writes:
>> The format of the Matlab-binary-files is in Matlab 5 different from
>> Matlab 4. My current octave version 2.0.9 can not read Matlab 5 binary
>> files. I also did not find anything about loading Matlab 5 files in
>> the NEWS of octave 2.1.2.
>> 
>> Are there any plans for the future to allow reading Matlab 5 files
>> in octave? 

MH> Hello Andreas,
MH> MATLAB v5 can save data in a v4-compatible way, if you don't use
MH> the new features of v5.   


MH> From help save: 
MH> SAVE fname X Y Z  -v4  saves a MAT-file that MATLAB 4 can LOAD.

Thank you. I know this option. The reason of my question was that the
exchange of data with Matlab users becomes more difficult, when you
have to ask them to save the data in a special way. So, if octave
still wants to be matlab-compatible in the way that I can write programs
which can be used in octave as well as in matlab, then the
implementation of the new binary format seems to be necessary.

	Andreas