Comments in data -- bug??

[John W. Eaton]

On 23-Sep-1998, (Ted Harding) <address@hidden> wrote:

| I want to put comments on the lines of data in an m-file defining
| matrices, e.g.
| 
| data_1994 = [
| 10 25 % 20 Apr 1994
|  3 14
| 13 39
| 12 21
| 24 42
|  6 12
|  2 15
|  3  4
|  8 16
|  5 12
| 29 56 % 30 Apr 1994
| ];
| 
| However, on being run, this gives me:
| 
| parse error near line 3 of file temp.m
| 
| >>>  3 14
|     ^
| 
| parse error near line 4 of file temp.m
| 
| >>> 13 39
|          ^
| 
| and so on. Now I change it so that there are no spaces at the beginning
| of the line:
| 
| data_1994 = [
| 10 25 % 20 Apr 1994
| 03 14
| 13 39
| 12 21
| 24 42
| 06 12
| 02 15
| 03  4
| 08 16
| 05 12
| 29 56 % 30 Apr 1994
| ];
| 
| and it works perfectly (of course, without the comments it also works,
| spaces or no spaces). This change of behaviour, depending on whether
| there is a space or not, strikes me as anomalous: the Manual says "The
| Octave interpreter ignores the rest of the line following a sharp sign or
| a percent symbol", which is what happens in the second case and
| presumably should also happen in the first.
| 
| Bug?? (Octave, version 2.0.13 (i586-pc-linux-gnulibc1), compiled by me).

It looks like a bug to me.  Please try the following patch.  Also,
please report bugs to the bug-octave mailing list instead of
help-octave.

Thanks,

jwe


*** src/lex.l~  Sun May  3 14:46:19 1998
--- src/lex.l   Wed Sep 23 21:08:26 1998
***************
*** 335,341 ****
  // semicolons.
  %}
  
! <MATRIX>{SNLCMT}*\n{SNLCMT}* {
      fixup_column_count (yytext);
      eat_whitespace ();
      if (Vwhitespace_in_literal_matrix != 2)
--- 335,342 ----
  // semicolons.
  %}
  
! <MATRIX>{S}*{COMMENT}{SNLCMT}* |
! <MATRIX>{S}*{NL}{SNLCMT}* {
      fixup_column_count (yytext);
      eat_whitespace ();
      if (Vwhitespace_in_literal_matrix != 2)