AW: Strange?

[address@hidden]

Hello,
first of all: many thanks to all commenters - and you were fully right (and I 
was fully wrong :-))

A="B";
isvarname (A)
ans = 1

because the value of "A" (which is "B" in this case) is a valid variable name. 
So, A=1; isvarname(A) returns isvarname(1) and therefore 0 because "1" cannot 
be the name of a variable.

So, I understood it now :-). One thing that I had misunderstood was that I had 
had thought isvarname would check if "A" is actually the name of a variable. 
However, I understand now this is only a test whether or not it is basically 
possible to use it as the name of a variable.

Take care, thank you for a great program


Dieter




-----Original-Nachricht-----
Betreff: Re: Strange?
Datum: 2020-03-10T12:58:33+0100
Von: "Sergei Steshenko via Help-octave" <address@hidden>
An: "address@hidden" <address@hidden>


On 10/03/2020 10:47, Ian McCallion wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Mar 2020 at 08:22, address@hidden
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Dear listmembers,
>> I am currently trying to go through the documentation - it's something like 
>> 1000 pages, so this takes time :-). I am using octave 5.2.0. When I say
>>
>>>> A=5;
>>>> A
>> A =  5
>>>> isvarname (A)
>> ans  =  0
>>
>> shouldn't this be "1" rather than "0"? The manual states "Return true if 
>> name is a valid variable name". In my example I consider "A" a valid 
>> variable name, isn't it? So, could you shed some light on what I am doing 
>> wrong here?
> you need to say:
>
>     isvarname('a')
>
> Cheers... Ian
>
>
Most likely  isvarname('A') - IIRC Octave is case-sensitive.

--Sergei.