Newbie questions -- Weird Problem

[Billy Chow]

Hello,

I wrote earlier about `conv' problem when the suggested lines for
better Matlab compatibility (described in FAQ) are used in
~/.octaverc.

It turns out that there is a weird problem with the variable
`whitespace_in_literal_matrix'.  Below is an example.  Octave (1.1.1)
was started clean, ie no .octaverc.

     Octave:1> conv(1,1)
     ans = 1
     Octave:2> whitespace_in_literal_matrix = 'traditional';
     Octave:3> conv(1,1)
     ans = 1

As you can see this is fine.  Now restart Octave.

     Octave:1> whitespace_in_literal_matrix = 'traditional';
     Octave:2> conv(1,1)
     Parse error near line 59 of file conv.m:

     >>>      x=[b, zeros(1, ly - lb)];
                   ^

     error: `conv' undefined near line 2, column 1
     error: evaluating index expression near line 2, column 1
 
This explains why conv didn't work when I have the
whitespace_in_literal_matrix = 'traditional' line in my .octaverc.

Any ideas?  While i am asking newbie questions, it seems that a matrix
in Octave cannot have string constants.  This is one major difference
with Matlab.  I tried the following.

     Octave:1> aa=['foo';'bar']
     aa = 102 111 111
          98  97  114

Strings are converted to ASCII values.

Thanks for your help.  If these are really dumb questions, please bear
with me.  I am new to Octave.

/Billy