From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Feb  8 15:55:36 2000
Subject: about: cubic root; load/save; struct member
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: redbliss at libero dot it
Cc: "help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu" <help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu>
Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 15:55:51 -0600 (CST)

On  8-Feb-2000, redbliss at libero dot it <redbliss@libero.it> wrote:

| (-1)^(1./3.) yields
| 0.5 + i 0.86603
| is this the wanted behaviour?

Yes.  There are three roots: 0.5 + 0.86603i, -1, and 0.5 - 0.86603i.
Octave is returning the principal root.  (Funny that no one ever
complains that 1^(1/2) doesn't return -1.  :-)

| the file parameter of load and save could not be a variable containing
| a string ( the file name), is it possible to do something like
| filename = "a.dat"
| save -ascii filename
| (actually this yields an error)

Try

  filename = "a.dat";
  save ("-ascii", filename);

| is it possible to eliminate the member of a struct, so that the struct
| no longer contains it ?

Sorry, there is no function for this in the 2.0.x releases of Octave.
You could do it using a brute-force method, in which you copied all
the elements that you wanted to keep.

jwe



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