Re: `size' and trailing singleton dimensions

[David Bateman]

The N-D stuff is a moving target, that is trying to implement this
stuff correctly. If you tried the CVS version of octave, you'd find 
that the case you cite is already fixed...

D.

According to Peter J. Acklam <address@hidden> (on 05/31/04):
> I use N-dimensional array manipulation heavily in MATLAB, but
> switching to Octave I run into many problems.  Trying to
> understand this from the ground up, I have a few questions:
> 
> Why does Octave treat trailing singleton dimensions differently
> than MATLAB, even when the `--traditional' switch is used?
> 
> It seems that trailing singleton dimensions matter in some cases,
> but not in others.  For instance, `size' does care about them, but
> `ndims' doesn't:
> 
>    >> x = rand(5, 7);
>    >> size(x, 2)
>    ans = 7
>    >> size(x, 3)
>    error: size: requested dimension (= 3) out of range
> 
> For the above call to `size' to work, I would have to include a
> trailing singleton dimension:
> 
>    >> x = rand(5, 7, 1);
>    >> size(x, 3)
>    ans = 1
> 
> So `size' does not behave like MATLAB's `size'.  It also returns
> singleton dimensions when called with one argument:
> 
>    >> size(x)
>    ans =
> 
>            5        7        1
> 
> However, `ndims' ignores the trailing singleton dimensions:
> 
>    >> ndims(x)
>    ans = 2
> 
> As a consequence `ndims(x)' isn't necessarily equal to
> `length(size(x))' which it always is in MATLAB.
> 
> It seems inconsistent to me that `size' does care about trailing
> singleton dimensions, but `ndims' doesn't.  What's the logic
> behind this?  (I have read section 3, Data Types, but that doesn't
> mention this.)
> 
> Peter
> 
> -- 
> Peter J. Acklam - address@hidden - http://home.online.no/~pjacklam
> 
> 
> 
> 
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