[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #34006] inadequate/recursice description of 'length' function

[Sergei Steshenko]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?34006>

                 Summary: inadequate/recursice description of 'length'
function
                 Project: GNU Octave
            Submitted by: sergstesh
            Submitted on: Sat 13 Aug 2011 01:49:11 PM GMT
                Category: None
                Severity: 3 - Normal
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Documentation
                  Status: None
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: 3.4.2
        Operating System: Any

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Details:

This is what I see:


octave:14> help length
`length' is a built-in function

 -- Built-in Function:  length (A)
     Return the "length" of the object A.  For matrix objects, the
     length is the number of rows or columns, whichever is greater (this
     odd definition is used for compatibility with MATLAB).


Additional help for built-in functions and operators is
available in the on-line version of the manual.  Use the command
`doc <topic>' to search the manual index.

Help and information about Octave is also available on the WWW
at http://www.octave.org and via the address@hidden
mailing list.
octave:15>     


, i.e. length is explained through '"length"'.

Another experiment:


octave:15> length("abcde")
ans =  5

.

So, for a string 'length' returns number of characters ?

One more experiment:


octave:16> foo = {"a", "bcdef"}
foo =
{
  [1,1] = a
  [1,2] = bcdef
}
octave:17> length(foo)
ans =  2


- so, for a cell array number of elements is returned ?

All these aspects need to be clarified in documentation.






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