Re: Matlab-compatible string class

[Richard Crozier]

On 29/12/17 13:25, John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 12/28/2017 07:57 PM, Richard Crozier wrote:
> > On 28/12/17 16:41, Rik wrote:
> > > On 12/27/2017 09:38 PM, address@hidden wrote:
> >
> > > I don't see a smooth transition path either.  Although Matlab 
> > > presents the string class as a fundamental data type, it is actually 
> > > closer to a container data type like a cell array.  In fact, by using 
> > > cell arrays of strings you can make portable code that will run in 
> > > either Octave or Matlab.  Maybe this is unkind, but the principal 
> > > advantage seems to be the syntactic sugar of using parentheses '()' 
> > > for indexing rather than cell array indexing '{}'.
> >
> > I believe you can also do things like:
> >
> > x = "the cat " + "sat on the mat"
> >
> > which is kind of handy. More like a python string.
>
> This could have also been done with character arrays.  Except that the 
> original design of Matlab chose to have character arrays work like 
> numbers when used with arithmetic operators.
>
> jwe

Definitely true, and I guess the string class is their way of trying to 
fix this while maintining backward compatibility.

Richard


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