Newbie questions -- Weird Problem

[Francesco Potorti`]

        Octave:1> aa=['foo';'bar']
        aa = 102 111 111
             98  97  114

   Strings are converted to ASCII values.

On alpha, instead I get:

        Octave:1> aa=["foo", "bar"]
        aa = foobar
        Octave:2> aa=["foo"; "bar"]
        error: invalid conversion from string to real matrix
        error: evaluating assignment expression near line 20, column 3
--
         Francesco Potorti`     | address@hidden (Internet)
         researcher at          | 39369::pot (DECnet)
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