Round/curly bracket interchangeability for cell

[Daniel J Sebald]

I just noticed that once a cell variable exists, round brackets may be 
substituted for curly brackets.  I first noticed this when I encountered 
a simple error like the following:

octave:49> a{1} = 10;
octave:50> a{2}
error: a(2): out of bound 1

Notice that the error message has a round bracket rather than curly 
bracket, in light of the variable 'a' being a cell.  My thinking was 
that the following makes more sense for an error:

error: a{2}: out of bound 1

After further examination, I found the following is acceptable:

octave:54> b{1} = "curly";
octave:55> b(2) = "round"
b =


{
  [1,1] = curly
  [1,2] = round
}

(Well, first thing, notice two spaces between "b =" and the variable 
contents display, is that a bug?)

I don't know if this curly/round bracket is a compatibility issue, but I 
would think this is too free use of round brackets and can cause more 
confusion than anything.  I mean, it is difficult enough for someone 
learning the language to comprehend the difference between a cell and an 
array.  Then introduce the idea that if I first use curly bracket, from 
then on I can write lines of code that use the round bracket to index 
that cell.  Being a new user, one might type by mistake "()" rather than 
"{}" and be completely confused.  Even an experienced user wouldn't like 
reading code that did such a thing.

Dan