[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #60711] textscan with '.' char read as float

[Paul Netsaver]

Follow-up Comment #2, bug #60711 (project octave):

>>I'm not sure why Matlab decides there are two values here when the delimiter
was clearly specified to be the comma ','.  
I think the problem is not the delimiter, it is the dot.
Replace the dot with another char, e.h. 'a':

>> q=textscan([',,a,,3'],'%f','delimiter',',')
q =
{
  [1,1] =
     NaN
     NaN
}

You see that textscan stops when doesn't find a match (this results is the
same in Octave and Matlab), while NaN does not stop the scan as it's a match
with an EmptyValue.
I think that the true difference is that according to Matlab the dot '.' does
not match a float '%f' (therefore stops the scan and does not read the
following NaNs), while Octave does match with a NaN float, irrespective of the
delimiter.
Probabily Octave starts a matching with '.' waiting for a number (e.g. '.0')
and initializes a NaN, then when it finds the limiter and cannot convert to a
number leaves the NaN.
Matlab instead understands that '.' alone cannot resolve to a number (even
empty) and stops the scan.
By the way I can resolve with a dedicated check, it was only to understand if
this was the expected behavior or not.

Thanks and regards,
Netsaver
 





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