Re: Finding DOCSTRINGS in the source code

[Michael D Godfrey]

On 01/16/2011 02:08 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:

But now, thinking about this text, it seems a bit misleading, since it
is not OK to edit anything in the generated .texi files, and adding a
"DO NOT EDIT this file, it was generated automatically from..."
statement for every docstring seems quite redundant.  Also, I'm not
sure this is a significant problem as I don't remember seeing very
many (if any) patches that modify the .texi files.

Comments?

Thanks for all the information.  I doubt if much needs to be done to make
editing the help text for builtin functions more obvious.  Few are as poorly
informed as I was (am?).  In any case what I just tried was to search for "Attr"
in src/variables.cc.  This found:

1789: @table @asis\n\
1790: @item Attr\n\
1791: Attributes of the listed variable.  Possible attributes are:\n\
1792: @table @asis\n\
1793: @item blank\n\
1794: Variable in local scope\n\
1795: \n\
1796: @item @code{g}\n\
1797: Variable with global scope\n\
1798: \n\
1799: @item @code{p}\n\
1800: Persistent variable\n\
1801: @end table\n\
===================================
Updating this @table should be the right fix.  Right?

I will do this soon, after current build to bring my sources
up to date completes.

p.s. When I went to check this I found again that help whos
       as the first command after starting Octave led to hang
       requiring kill -9.  I think that this hang usually (maybe always)
       happens if it is the first command.  I ran:
         octave
         xx=1;
         help whos
     and it always works.
        octave
        help whos
    always (right now) hangs.