From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Fri Jan 19 10:35:50 2001
Subject: Re: .oct-files/ library-wrapper
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: bsapp at lanl dot gov
Cc: Daniel Heiserer <Daniel dot Heiserer at bmw dot de>,         "help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu" <help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu>
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 10:35:38 -0600

On 19-Jan-2001, Ben Sapp <bsapp at lanl dot gov> wrote:

| Daniel Heiserer wrote:
|
| > How do I know what kind of datatype is args(j)?
| 
| in octave/src/ov.h   There are a number of functions defined to
| determine the data type.  They are:
| 
| [...]
| 
| Then once you determine the correct type you can get it representation
| with something like:
| 
| ComplexRowVector = args(0).complex_row_vector_value();

Since there are automatic conversions that can happen, it is generally
better to simply try to extract what you want, and then see if that
works (i.e., check error_state).  It is more flexible to do things
this way because someone may later introduce a new data type that
could work for you, but if you have only checked for a specific type,
your code will fail to accept the new data type, even if it would make
sense to do so.

jwe




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