From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Jan 26 12:25:02 1999
Subject: tmp file problem
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: David Nicholson  <David dot Nicholson at src dot bae dot co dot uk>
Cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 12:25:34 -0600 (CST)

On 26-Jan-1999, David Nicholson <David dot Nicholson at src dot bae dot co dot uk> wrote:

| My octave programs rapidly fill 
| up /var/tmp on my Unix machine whenever
| they execute. 
| Anyone know if/how I can solve this ? 

 - Function File:  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.

The reason Octave can't delete the files automatically is that it
cannot know when gnuplot is finished with them.

jwe