From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Jan 30 19:07:01 2001
Subject: Basic questions regarding liboctave and dynamic function development
From: Joshua Rigler <Jrigler at colorado dot edu>
To: Help-Octave <help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 18:06:59 -0700

Keeping in mind that I am fairly fluent in C, but know virtually nothing
about object oriented programming or C++, please forgive my ignorance...

1) What exactly is liboctave (for what, and how is it used)? How do I
interpret the documentation for liboctave found in liboctave.ps? (part
of the Octave distribution docs)  

2) Is liboctave.ps supposed to describe all functions that should be
available to me when I write .oct functions? (It doesn't...for example I
have no idea what the function "matrix_value" does (found in lu.cc), the
docs for liboctave say nothing about it, and I see no explanation in the
header file or source code).

3) Any suggestions for how somebody who understands C, but has no
object-oriented programming experience, and only a basic understanding
of C++ syntax can figure out how to write some .oct functions to make
calls to a C library?  Is there a trick to including a C header file in
a C++ program?

I won't go so far as to ask for a basics of C++ lesson, but if anyone
could help me get just a rudimentary understanding of how things work in
Octave, I should be able to put together a nice CDF I/O package for
Octave fairly quickly.

Thanks,

-EJR



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