Re: private functions in the core Octave distribution

[Søren Hauberg]

ons, 02 12 2009 kl. 04:27 -0500, skrev John W. Eaton:
> On  2-Dec-2009, S ren Hauberg wrote:
> 
> | For me the most important part of the private directories is that their
> | content is hidden by default. If the user for some reason decides to add
> | the private directory to the path, then I guess the user known that he
> | or she is doing something that you're not supposed to do.
> 
> Users are supposed to know lots of things that can cause them trouble,
> but do they read the documentation or even catch clues from things
> like a directory named private?

Yeah, I guess you got a good point.

> | Ahh, I got confused. 'help' contains the following:
> | 
> |       case "html"
> |         [text, status] = strip_html_tags (text);
> | 
> | but that isn't quite the same as calling '__strip_html_tags__'.
> 
> So where is strip_html_tags defined?  Should the calls be using
> __strip_html_tags__ instead?  If so, then I'll keep the function and
> make it private.

It looks like a bug to me. When I developed the m-file implementation of
the help system, I started out by using a private directory for these
kind of functions. Unfortunately, we didn't use private functions
anywhere else, so it was decided to just use the old
'__this_function_is_private__' function names instead. So, I guess I
forgot to change the call from 'strip_html_tags' to
'__strip_html_tags__'. I think you should rename the file to
'strip_html_tags.m' and move it to a private directory.

Soren