Re: Matlab-compatible string class

[Julien Bect]

Le 27/12/2017 à 23:47, John W. Eaton a écrit :
> With this change:
>
>   http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/0b65949870e3
>
> we are beginning to handle the existence of the Matlab string class 
> that is now created in Matlab when double quoted strings are used.  I 
> expect that it will not be too long before users will expect full 
> compatibility in this area.  But I'm not sure how we will transition 
> from Octave's current behavior for double-quoted string constants to 
> the one now used by Matlab.  For example, in Octave "foo\n" is a 
> 4-element character array containing 'f', 'o', 'o', and a linefeed 
> character.  In Matlab it is a string object, but it also contains 5 
> characters, 'f', 'o', 'o', '\', and 'n'. I'm sure there are other 
> differences, but this is sure to cause some trouble.  I don't see a 
> smooth transition path.  Does anyone have any ideas about what to do?

I don't if this is feasible but here is a suggestion :

1) Maintain both behaviors and provide a flag to select the desired one.

2) Use the "old behavior" for now, since the the change is still recent 
(R2016b I gather) and probably the support for string arrays won't be 
complete in the next releases.

3) Make the transition to the new behavior when the support is 
considered as complete, while still providing the flag to support the 
old behavior.

4) Remove the old behavior much much later.

@++
Julien