Re: Idea: Extension of function / return syntax.

[Michael D. Godfrey]

On 01/07/2013 01:17 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:
> On  7-Jan-2013, Michael D. Godfrey wrote:
>
> | In any case, I have thought now and then of proposing that "ans"
> | be made into a stack.  This idea is somewhat relevant to this
> | discussion, so I am just mentioning it now.  It might be nice
> | is this feature could be part of a more general capability rather
> | than a special case.
>
> I've considered this in the past but it presents some memory
> management issues.  With a language like Octave, it would be easy to
> chew up all available memory with a stack of mostly useless values.
>
> Apart from the memory issues, what should the syntax be?  Currently,
> ans is a variable that is automatically created.  I think it has to
> stay that way for compatibility with Matlab.  So maybe there would be
> another function to access the contents of the "answer stack"?
>
> jwe
I doubt if memory usage is the worst problem.  The stack could be limited
to some fixed depth.  But, I am not sure this is really worth it. Giving 
it some
other name would be OK, I think.  But then it is just another feature.  Ugh.

What would be the implications of just making "ans" global?  If there is 
nothing
that this would break, it could be useful.

mg