Re: help foo, with empty function foo

[John W. Eaton]

On 06/24/2013 03:58 PM, Carnë Draug wrote:
> On 24 June 2013 15:53, Doug Stewart<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Juan Pablo Carbajal<address@hidden>
> > wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:18 PM, Muhali<address@hidden>  wrote:
> > > > If foo.m contains only help text, e.g.
> > > >
> > > > % This is foo.
> > > >
> > > > then in ML 'help foo' displays that text while octave produces an error:
> > > >
> > > > error: help: 'foo' is not documented
> > > >
> > > > I am not sure if this is a bug.
> > >
> > > Octave has its own documentation syntax
> > >
> > > http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/Documentation-Tips.html#Documentation-Tips
> > >
> > > I wouldn't say that not showing the documentation is breaking the
> > > code. But I am not sure
> >
> >
> > there was no documentation to show.
>
> There is documentation. Documentation is defined as the first block of
> comments that does not start by "Author" or "Copyright". It doesn't
> matter if its plain text or TexInfo.
>
> But apparently, it only looks for documentation if there's any Octave
> code in there at all.

It works for me with 3.6.2.  What version are you using in which it 
doesn't work?

To answer an earlier question, it is useful to have a .m file that 
contains only documentation because this is the only way to provide help 
for a .mex file, which cannot have a doc string embedded in it.

jwe