From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Fri Mar  9 09:56:35 2001
Subject: Re: is_scalar conflicts with isstring
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: SZABO Sandor <sszabo at chardonnay dot math dot bme dot hu>
cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 09:56:28 -0600

On  9-Mar-2001, SZABO Sandor <sszabo at chardonnay dot math dot bme dot hu> wrote:

| >> isnumeric("a")
| ans = 1
| >>
| 
| I use 2.0.16.

In the 2.1.x version of Octave, isnumeric ("a") returns false if the
value of implicit_str_to_num_ok is false.  Otherwise, it returns true,
because it is possible for the implicit conversion to allow "a" to act
as a numeric value.

FWIW, I don't think the built-in variables like implicit_str_to_num_ok
were a very good idea.  It would be better to simply not allow the
implicit conversion at all.  But then I'm sure a lot of people would
complain about how that is not compatible with Matlab.  :-/

BTW, readers of this list might be interested in the following link:

  http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/Conferences/DSC-2001/Proceedings/Eaton.pdf

It includes more discussion about other undesireable language features
as well as some Octave history and a few thoughts about the future.

jwe



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