From octave-maintainers-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu Sun Jan 12 01:12:05 2003
Subject: overloaded functions
From: Paul Kienzle <pkienzle at users dot sourceforge dot net>
To: octave-dev at lists dot sourceforge dot net
Cc: octave-maintainers at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu,    David Bateman <David.Bateman@motorola.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2003 02:08:39 -0500

I've added dispatch.cc to octave-forge/main/miscellaneous.  
This adds the ability to overload functions in octave.

E.g.,

    mark_as_command dispatch
    dispatch sin string g
    function g,'g',end
    sin('x')
    # ==> g
    sin(3)
    # ==> 0.14112
    dispatch min string g
    min([1 2 3])
    # ==> 1
    min('x')
    # ==> g
    dispatch reshape string g
    reshape(1:6,2,3)
    # ==> [1 3 5; 2 4 6 ]
    reshape('x',2,3)
    # ==> g
    help sin
    # ==>
sin is a builtin function
 - Mapping Function:  sin (X)
     Compute the sin of each element of X.
   Overloaded function string:g

If you are using octave 2.1.40 compile it with mkoctfile -DOCTAVE2140
dispatch.cc, otherwise use octave 2.1.43.

Now we need PKG_ADD to contain the appropriate dispatch functions
for octave forge, such as "dispatch find sparse spfind".

Paul Kienzle
pkienzle at users dot sf dot net