Rik-4 wrote
Do we need symvar.m in core? It seems like anyone who wants this
functionality will be loading the entire symbolic package and getting a
better version there.
symvar (in Octave core) is in contrast to its pendant of the symbolic
package useless for symbolic calculations:
"Identify the symbolic variable names in the string str. [...] Any names
identified are returned in a cell array of strings."
In Matlab there are two versions as well: one is part of the symbolic
toolbox since R2008b and another one is part of Matlab since ancient times.
To stay compatible to Matlab lets wait for them to deprecate that ancient
(useless?) function (like they did with "inline") and we can do then as well
with ease.