[Pkg-octave-devel] Matlab-Octave compatibility issue in future-Debian package

[Michael Hanke]

Hi,

On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 04:32:39PM -0500, John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 20-Mar-2006, Michael Hanke wrote:
>
> | Trying around with matlab I wasn't able to use eval to run shell
> | command. I patched those functions to use system() instead and
> reported
> | that to upstream.
>
> I took a quick look at the code you sent in your first message.  It
> uses commands like
>
>   foo = sprintf ('! shell command here');
>   eval (foo);
>
> This is not an eval vs. system issue.  You are seeing problems because
> Octave does not accept "!" to mean execute a shell command.  In
> Octave, ! (in addition to ~) is used to negate a logical expression.
But simply replacing eval() with system() makes it working in Ocatve.

>
> Also, I saw commands like
>
>   sprintf ('! /bin/rm %s %s\n', file1, file2)
>
> It might be better to use the delete function to delete files because
> that is OS-independent and the /bin/rm shell command is not.  I'm not
> sure whether you could eliminate all OS dependencies in the code, but
> it might be a good idea to at least limit them to the cases where it
> really can't be avoided.
Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with neither Matlab nor Octave. I simply
wanted to provide the opportunity to use the functions provided by
upstream in a free software alternative to matlab. If you look at the
package, you'll see that this Matlab stuff is just a minor part of it.
And the rest of the package is far from being as optimal as it could
be. Fixing those matlab stuff properly would cost me a lot of time,
learning the list of available function available in both Octave and
Matlab. This is a task I cannot handle ATM.

But as there is not much matlab code, it could be possible for a
matlab/octave expert to make the necessary modifications quickly.

I would love if someone could do this and send me the patch.


Cheers,

Michael




-- 
GPG key:  1024D/3144BE0F Michael Hanke
http://apsy.gse.uni-magdeburg.de/hanke
ICQ: 48230050
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