From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Jan 20 03:14:09 1998
Subject: Re: How to tell a function from a string
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: "Lorenzo M. Catucci" <lorenzo at argon dot roma2 dot infn dot it>
Cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 03:10:58 -0600

On 20-Jan-1998, Lorenzo M. Catucci <lorenzo at argon dot roma2 dot infn dot it> wrote:

| On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, John W. Eaton wrote:
| 
| > On 17-Jan-1998, Lorenzo M. Catucci <lorenzo at argon dot roma2 dot infn dot it> wrote:
| > 
| > Unfortunately, there isn't a good way to do this from Octave, though
| > you could probably wrap is_valid function from src/variables.cc in a
| > DEFUN easily enough.
| > 
| > In 2.0.x, you can do something like this (from src/lsode.cc):
| > 
| >   tree_fvc *lsode_fcn = is_valid_function (args(0), "lsode", 1);
| > 
| >   if (! lsode_fcn)
| >     error ...
| > 
| > In 2.1.x and later the interface will change.  You will have to use
| > octave_function* instead of tree_fvc*.
| > 
| Now comes another question: does there exist some reason not to have such
| a wrapper defined into octave's main? 

If you mean why haven't I written it, probably because I never needed
it and I don't recall anyone else ever complaining that it was missing.

jwe