What is the best way to check whether a data file exists (in order to avoid its accidental overwriting)?
1) The function exist() is supposed to return 2 "if the name (after appending `.m') is a function file in Octave's `path'", but it also returns 2 if a file is a data file in my search path, e.g., my current working directory. Is this the intended behaviour and something I should rely on, or is it just some side effect which can vanish in the next release of Octave. In the former case, the documentation should probably explicitely say so (Matlab documentation claims that exist(name) returns 2 "If name is an M-file on your MATLAB® search
path. It also returns 2 when name is the full pathname
to a file or the name of an ordinary file on your MATLAB search
path. ").
2) stat() also does the job, but I believe it is not available in Matlab?