how to return vector of strings?

[John W. Eaton]

On 22-Apr-1997, Tom Goles <address@hidden> wrote:

| I'm trying to return a vector of character strings from dynamically
| loadable c++ function (.oct file). 
| For example, if my function is called 'Test' then from octave I'd like
| to call it as follows:
| 
| octave> a = Test()
| a =
| 
| Hello
| world
| 
| octave>
| 
| In other words, the vector that gets returned should be the same as if
| I simply typed:
| 
| octave> a = ["Hello";"world"]
| a =
| 
| Hello
| world

Use Octave's string_vector class (header file is str-vec.h,
distributed in the liboctave directory).

  #include <octave/oct.h>

  DEFUN_DLD (test, , ,
    "usage: test ()\n\
  \n\
  Return a friendly array of strings.")
  {
    string_vector retval (11);

    retval(0) = "hello";
    retval(1) = "world";
    retval(2) = "these";
    retval(3) = "are";
    retval(4) = "some";
    retval(5) = "strings";
    retval(6) = "in";
    retval(7) = "a";
    retval(8) = "friendly";
    retval(9) = "string";
    retval(10) = "vector";

    return retval;
  }

jwe