[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #55742] fminsearch does not pass extra arguments to objective function, undocumented old Matlab behavior

[Mike Miller]

Update of bug #55742 (project octave):

                Severity:              3 - Normal => 2 - Minor              
                Priority:              5 - Normal => 3 - Low                
                  Status:                    None => Confirmed              
                 Summary: Related to bug #41888, fix not quite working yet--
crashes at the very end of the search. => fminsearch does not pass extra
arguments to objective function, undocumented old Matlab behavior

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Follow-up Comment #1:

Confirmed, this is because of the final call to 'fun' for the 'fval' second
return value. So in Octave 4.4, confirmed that this error occurs when calling
fminsearch with two output arguments and an optional argument passed to the
function.

As documented elsewhere, the best way to pass auxiliary arguments to your
objective function is to use an anonymous function, for example in the
attached fminsearchBugTest2.m.

Moreover, in the changes made for Octave 5 since 4.4, it looks to me like the
functionality added in bug #41888 has been broken in revision a00379f6f8c4
(https://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/a00379f6f8c4), probably
accidentally. So this is a bigger bug, but is it worth fixing (again)? As
mentioned earlier on bug #41888, this calling syntax is not documented Matlab
behavior, do we need to continue supporting this when anonymous functions
works far better and more flexibly?

(file #46311)
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Additional Item Attachment:

File name: fminsearchBugTest2.m           Size:0 KB
    <https://savannah.gnu.org/file/fminsearchBugTest2.m?file_id=46311>



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