prefer_column_vectors?

[John W. Eaton]

What do people think about eliminating the built-in variable
prefer_column_vectors?  In Octave, it is used to decide what
orientation should be used for things like

  clear x; x(:) = [1;2;3;4];

or

  clear x; for i = 1:4; x(i) = i; end

(in Matlab, both of these examples will create a row vector).

It now seems to me that having prefer_column_vectors just adds
unnecessary complexity and I'd like to remove it and only have the
Matlab-compatible behavior.

Comments?

jwe