[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #46603] add or document a way to determine whether format is "compact" or "loose"

[Mike Miller]

URL:
  <http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?46603>

                 Summary: add or document a way to determine whether format is
"compact" or "loose"
                 Project: GNU Octave
            Submitted by: mtmiller
            Submitted on: Fri 04 Dec 2015 11:38:00 AM EST
                Category: Interpreter
                Severity: 1 - Wish
                Priority: 5 - Normal
              Item Group: Feature Request
                  Status: None
             Assigned to: None
         Originator Name: 
        Originator Email: 
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
                 Release: dev
        Operating System: Any

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Details:

The "format" command allows selecting between "compact" and "loose" as in
Matlab, but there is no documented way to determine what the current setting
is. Compiled code can use the global variable "Vcompact_format".

In 3.8 and earlier versions, the root handle property "FormatSpacing" could be
queried, but this has been removed in version 4.0 since it became deprecated
in recent versions of Matlab. In bug #46000 and bug #46599, the consensus
seems to be to keep that property out of Octave from now on.

There is an undocumented internal function called "__compactformat__" that was
added in 4.0, but this probably shouldn't be relied on either. It doesn't seem
to be used anywhere. But thanks to me it is now used by the Forge symbolic
package.

Should there be a documented way to query the current compact vs loose format
setting? Should it be a new dedicated function? Or should it be a hack as
suggested by Kai in bug #46000?




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