Re: nfields replaced by numfields on default branch

[Lukas Reichlin]

On 02.03.2014, at 22:01, Rik <address@hidden> wrote:

> 3/2/14
> 
> All,
> 
> I deprecated nfields and added the new function numfields (in analogy with
> numel) to replace it.  This probably won't make a difference to most people
> since it was under-utilized.  I changed some core m-files to now use
> numfields which made the code cleaner and simpler.  The changeset is here
> (http://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/fcd87f68af4f).
> 
> --Rik

I don't quite get it. First you want to delete nfields, a function introduced 
in Octave 3.4 (!) because it is not widely used (yet). Then you rename it to 
numfields in analogy to numel. What about ndims or nnz? Should it be "numdims" 
or "numnz" then as well?

The reason why I object to your change is that I want to keep the control 
package's dependency on Octave's version number as low as possible. Currently 
it's 3.6.0 and I don't want to raise it for no obvious reason.

In order to not exclude users (e.g. Debian and Ubuntu), I would have to create 
a DEFUN_DLD "nfields2" or the like such that there are no conflicts in Octave 
3.6 and 3.8 as well as 4.0 and later. Then I'd have to keep oct-file "nfields2" 
in the control package until some show-stopping bug or important feature 
requires me to raise the dependency to Octave 4.0 or later.

Lukas