improvements in matlab compatibility

[John Eaton]

Anders Holtsberg <address@hidden> wrote:

:         The notation  y = x(:)  does not work.

It will work as you expect if you set the variable

  do_fortran_indexing = "true"

See the section on compatibility with Matlab in the FAQ.  The FAQ
should be included in the source and binary distributions.

: Also x(:,ones(m,1)) for a column vector x is very useful.

This seems to work for me in version 1.1.1.

If you find a bug, please submit a complete bug report to
address@hidden  Please read the Bugs chapter in the
manual to see how to write a bug report so that the bug can be fixed.

:         y(:) = x  does not work either.

I'm not sure what the problem is here.  What size are y and x?  This
should work in 1.1.1 with do_fortran_indexing = "true" if y and x have
the same number of elements.

: And while we're at it: y(find(y<0)) = 0  with scalar right hand side
: will work in matlab 5.0 says mathworks, this is a good thing too.

This is probably a reasonable change to make.  I've added to the list
of things to do in the PROJECTS file.

:         Skip the "warning: empty matrix found in matrix list"-
:         error message. I know what I'm doing.

You can turn this warning off by setting the variable

  empty_list_elements_ok = "true"

In some future version, I intend to make it possible to disable or
enable all warnings on an individual basis. 

:         Skip the read-only property of I and J.

This is planned for 1.2.

:         The old style  rand  crashes many programs. rand([3 4]) 
:         means a 3 x 4 - matrix im matlab 4.x, not a 1 x 2 one.
:         This will be changed in octave I think somebody said?

This has already been done for 1.2.

Thanks,

jwe