polyval discussion

[Robert T. Short]

I have some questions about polyval.  Depending on the outcome of this 
discussion I will submit patches as necessary.

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First, a MATLAB compatibility issue.

If we have a matrix

p = [ [ 1 2 ];
         [ 3 4 ] ];

and we attempt to evaluate p

p = polyval(p,1)

octave errors - p must be a vector.  MATLAB on the other hand returns

p = 4

MATLAB seems to use the first column as the polynomial.

Personally, I think the MATLAB approach makes no sense, but should 
polyval emulate MATLAB?

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Second, here is what I would REALLY like polyval to do.

If p is a matrix, I would like polyval to return a vector in which each 
row is treated as a polynomial.  That is, for the example above,

p = polyval(p,1)

would return

p= [3;7]

The modifications to polyval to do this are very simple but this is 
decidedly not MATLAB compatible.

I could submit a new function, say mpolyval, but the new function would 
be a near clone of polyval.

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Comments?

Bob