ARG function

[John Eaton]

Eyal Doron <address@hidden> wrote:

:    Anybody have an idea why this function is called "arg"? In MATLAB
: it is called "phase". Why this needless incompatibility?

In the version of Matlab that I have access to, there is no function
called phase:

                              < M A T L A B (R) >
                  (c) Copyright 1984-93 The MathWorks, Inc.
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                                  Version 4.1
                                  Jun 14 1993

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  >> phase
  ??? Undefined function or variable phase.

  >> help phase

  phase not found.

Maybe you are thinking of angle(), not phase():

  >> help angle

   ANGLE  Phase angle.
          ANGLE(H) returns the phase angles, in radians, of a matrix with
          complex elements.  

          See also ABS, UNWRAP.


Octave has both arg() and angle() (they do the same thing).  I think I
chose the name arg() because that's what the function is called by
a number of mathematicians.

Thanks,

jwe