Re: Matlab 2016b introduces automatic broadcasting and functions in scripts

[PhilipNienhuis]

Carnë Draug wrote
> Hey guys
> 
> I just came across the Matlab release notes for 2016b [1].
> 
> Apparently they have introduced automatic broadcasting (they call it
> implicit expansion), and support for functions in scripts files.
> 
> Should we stop giving language-extension warnings for automatic
> broadcasting?
> 
> Carnë
> 
> [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/matlab/comments/4n7oy9/r2016b_prerelease/

What exactly would be the benefit?

If it is really so useful to follow bleeding-edge Matlab I could think up
more important things than dropping warnings that can be very useful.
As Lachlan pointed out in patch #8983, broadcasting can make debugging a lot
harder and it can introduce obscure bugs (think of unexpected / unintended
memory overflow), so completely doing away with
automatic-broadcasting-applied-warnings at this moment is a bit too quick
IMO.  In bug #45761 it is even mentioned that Octave's broadcast warning
might need to be reinstated.
Indeed, I have always interpreted automatic broadcasting less as a language
extension but more as a functional extension. So removing it from the
language-extension collection and giving it is own place (with default
"off") looks a lot more logical to me.

BTW do you know if Matlab is able to supply a warning if "implicit
expansion" happened, if desired by the user?

It may well be that the Matlab community will pick up automatic broadcasting
/ implicit expansion very slowly. 
As far as my experience goes in business environments, the newest Matlab is
rarely rolled out immediately and if if it is new features are rarely
immediately used for production means.

All of which is no reason to keep looking backwards.....

Philip




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