Re: "size(foo)" vs "size foo" (octave-3.4.3)

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 3 February 2012 22:06,  <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 02/04/2012 12:10 AM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
>> On 3 February 2012 11:03, Ismael Núñez-Riboni <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> It seems that if you use "size" without the parenthesis it interpretes the
>>> argument as a string...
>>
>> This is true of *all* Octave functions.
>>
>>     foo a b c d;
>>
>> is *exactly the same* as
>>
>>     foo("a", "b", "c", "d");
>>
>> See here:
>>
>>     http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Commands.html
>
>
> Is there any (help) command/function to show whether a name is a
> function or a command?

All functions are also commands. If a function only accepts string
arguments, it can be called with command syntax. But it's syntactical
to do, say,

    eig foo

even though it will fail because the eig function doesn't know what to
do with a string.

- Jordi G. H.