Re: Why is different ^ and .^?

[Corbin Champion]

It can't be "smarter."  There has to be a way to distinguish between the 
two.  If I gave you a square matrix it is completely valid to square the 
matrix as a whole or to square each element.  The then can be no way for the 
computer to know the which you want, unless you tell it.  I guess if it was 
a none square matrix it could automatically do a square of each element 
individually, but for a square matrix...you would still have to tell it what 
you want.  I think others that handle this differently have a different 
syntax (but still two cases) or seperate functions for the two cases, but 
never just one.
Corbin

> From: "Javier Arantegui Jimenez" <address@hidden>
> To: "Mike Miller" <address@hidden>
> CC: "Help-Octave List" <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: Why is different ^ and .^?
> Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 00:17:33 +0200 (CEST)
>
> Mike Miller said:
> > a^2 means a*a
> > a.^2 means "square every element of a"
> >
> > a^2  therefore requires that 'a' be a square matrix or scalar.
> > a.^2 does not require that 'a' have any particular dimensions
>
> OK. I understand it. But, could Octave be smart enough to distinguish
> between those cases? I think that other programs, like Euler, don't need
> to do this distinction.
>
> Javier
>
>
>
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