semantics of global variables and exist()

[Teemu Ikonen]

Hi everyone,

It seems that the semantics of declaring a global variable has changed
subtly between the CVS version and 2.1.50 (Debian packaged).

With 2.1.50 I get:

octave:1> global testvar
octave:2> exist("testvar")
ans = 0

With CVS version (last week):

octave:1> global testvar
octave:2> exist("testvar")
ans = 1

I have scripts which depend on this behaviour, so I'd like to know if this
is a bug or a feature. 

Is there perhaps another way of determining (inside a function) whether a
global variable has been declared and set, than using exist()?

Best wishes,

Teemu