Re: Matlab has implemented flip after only 10 years - deprecate flipdim

[Mike Miller]

On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 01:31:38 +0100, Carnë Draug wrote:
> Hi
> 
> during the codesprint this weekend (before I figured that the subject
> was going to increase line coverage), I added a new function, flip,
> and deprecated flipdim [1]. The function flip is exactly the same as
> flipdim, the only difference being that the first exists in Matlab
> (since R2014a - only 10 years after Octave).
> 
> I'm kinda regretting deprecating it because package maintainers will
> not have a chance to write code that works in both 4.0.X and 4.2.X
> without triggering warnings or errors. I think it kinda makes sense to
> deprecate flipdim in favour of flip (although it does annoy me folding
> to Mathworks every time), but it maybe it could go through a phase of
> semi, non-official deprecation, where it does not cause any warning,
> it is only noticed on the NEWS, and only properly deprecated after 1
> release.

I don't see a problem with what you've done. It's the same path we've
followed before for deprecating functions, right? I don't think somehow
"silently" deprecating it would have any effect, people will probably
continue to use flipdim until the warning actually appears.

If package maintainers want to continue to support multiple Octave
versions, they can locally disable the warning wherever flipdim is used
until they decide to switch to flip and depend on Octave >= 4.2.

-- 
mike