From octave-maintainers-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Tue Mar 25 08:42:04 2003
Subject: Re: Problem with load
From: Andy Adler <adler at site dot uottawa dot ca>
To: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
cc: octave-maintainers at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 09:41:44 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 24 Mar 2003, John W. Eaton wrote:

> On 22-Feb-2003, Andy Adler <adler at site dot uottawa dot ca> wrote:
>
> | On Sat, 22 Feb 2003, John W. Eaton wrote:
> | > It seems to me that if you want to load a file, you
> | > should probably be asking for exactly the file you want.  But maybe
> | > other people feel differently?  If so, what are the reasons (other
> | > than compatibility) that this feature is a good idea?
> |
> | Here is my reason:
> |
> | if exist('processed_data.mat')
> |    load processed_data.mat
> | else
> |    processed_data = recalculate_from_raw_data();
> | end
> |
> | Right now exist() doesn't tell me where it is, so
> | there is no way I can issue the load command.
> |
> | The fixes are: 1) have a way to know where it is, or
> | 2) have load pick it up automatically.
> | Matlab compatibility pushes for #1.
> |
> | On the other hand, this could be a switch to load.
>
> Couldn't you use file_in_loadpath to find the file?  It returns an
> empty matrix if it doesn't find the file you are looking for.  Also,
> you can use the optional argument "all" to find all the files with the
> given name.  In that case, you could also warn about possible problems
> due to duplicates.

That's a good idea. I didn't think of file_in_loadpath.
Could we at least change the help documentation to give
an example with file_in_loadpath to get Matlab compatible behaviour.

For example:

   Unlike the equivalent Matlab command, octave will not search
   the LOADPATH to find the file. If such behaviour is desired,
   then the following approach may be used:

      filepath= file_in_loadpath( file );
      if ~isempty( filepath );
         load(filepath);
      else
         error(["Can't file ', file, ' in LOADPATH'])
      end

Andy