On 17-Mar-2009, Alois Schlögl wrote: | I guess this comes from the old days (around Octave 2.0 and 2.1) when | there were really much to many global flags used much too often. | | However, a general ban on on the use of global flags is going to far, IMHO. | | OTOH, if global variables within functions are really "harmful", it | would be only consequent to enforce this rule by preventing the | use of global variables within functions. ;-)
Global variables are not always bad. Even some global option variables are OK. For example, those that simply change an output format or the appearance of a prompt don't cause much trouble because almost no code depends on those settings, and they are highly unlikely to cause a computation to produce incorrect results. But settings that affect the way code is parsed, or that cause a function to produce different results for the same input are harmful. I don't want to see any more of those introduced in Octave. I also don't want Octave to differ from Matlab when computing mean, std, etc., because I think doing so will generate bug reports. jwe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Apps built with the Adobe(R) Flex(R) framework and Flex Builder(TM) are powering Web 2.0 with engaging, cross-platform capabilities. Quickly and easily build your RIAs with Flex Builder, the Eclipse(TM)based development software that enables intelligent coding and step-through debugging. Download the free 60 day trial. http://p.sf.net/sfu/www-adobe-com _______________________________________________ Octave-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/octave-dev
