From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Oct 12 14:42:48 1999
Subject: Re: FW: Scalars and Matrices:
From: John Day <jday at csihq dot com>
To: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
Cc: "help-octave" <help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 15:54:02 -0400

In this discussion of scalars vs. 1-by-1 matrices I think we should give
thanks to the chap (Cleve Moler?) who first noticed that scalars are just
matrices with special properties, just like '1' is "just" a number, with
some special properties. 

We really don't need scalars if we account for these special properties
of 1-by-1 matrices. For example, in matrix muliplication both matrices
must share a common dimension, UNLESS ('special property') one or
both are 1-by-1 matrices. etc. etc.

See, _everything_ is a matrix. To see this you just need to realize that
MATLAB (and OCTAVE) worked just fine for years without all of these
fancy-shmancy cells and "datatypes".

IMHO :-)

John Day/CSI




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