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From: | Paul Kienzle |
Subject: | usage statement on builtin functions |
Date: | Sun, 13 Nov 2005 10:02:30 -0500 |
On Nov 13, 2005, at 7:56 AM, William Poetra Yoga H wrote:
--- Paul Kienzle <address@hidden> wrote:On Nov 12, 2005, at 11:34 PM, William Poetra Yoga H wrote:Btw, is my usage of @sc{} appropriate? Also, can I replace usage(...) above with this? help("isunix"); error("");No. This forces output to the terminal even if you are in an environment such as try ... catch or eval(code,catch).Well then, I think it would be nice if we can make function files behave like built-in functions: if it takes an argument and we don't specify one, it wouldprint the help message and exit with an error. Maybe we should have a specialized function to do this?
I agree that builtin functions should behave like scripts. However I prefer the script behaviour of printing a one-line usage statement when functions are used incorrectly rather than dumping a screenful of docs. Making this change to Octave would require substantial effort, so I wouldn't start it before asking John if he agrees. The implementation should also consider a possible future IDE. An IDE should be able to introspect on the function when providing feedback to the user on what parameters it is expecting. The usage statement is a simplified version of this. - Paul
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