Default value of "ans" variable when starting Octave

[John W. Eaton]

On 29-Aug-2011, Rik wrote:

| Immediately after starting Octave there is only one variable defined in the
| workspace which is "ans".  This variable seems to contain the possible
| values of optimset().  Is there any obvious reason why we do this?
| 
| I like to start the a new session with a clean workspace and this has
| always slightly bothered me.  A quick and easy solution would be to add a
| line to the default site-wide octaverc file which clears or initializes
| ans.  Yes, it wouldn't be run when users start with the '-f' option nor
| would it be run if sites already have an existing octaverc file.  On the
| other hand, I'm not sure I want to track down why ans is getting the
| particular value it has right now.
| 
| So would it bother anyone if I went ahead and added 'ans = [];' to
| local-rcfile which is installed as
| '$PREFIX/local/share/octave/site/m/startup/octaverc'.

I made this change instead:

  http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/b9a89ca0fb75

jwe