Re: test scripts

[John W. Eaton]

On 28-Apr-2000, Thomas Walter <address@hidden> wrote:

| I looked at the patches for improvement.  Cuurently the most testing
| code for vectors and matrices uses a syntax like:
|      [1 2 0]
| It would be much clearer and better to use
|    [1, 2, 0]
| then it works with 
|      whitespace_in_literal_matrix = "ignore"
| as suggested in the octave manual.

I sent mail to Paul requesting the following changes:

  The patches for hilb and vander wipe out the Texinfo comment
  header.  I'd rather preserve them.

  When writing code for Octave, can you please use Octave conventions?
  Things like double quotes for strings, surrounding assignment
  operators with spaces, a space between function names and the opening
  paren for the argument list and also after commas in the arg lists,
  parens around conditions in if and while statements, using `!' instead
  of `~' and `!=' instead of `~=', and using the short-circuit || and &&
  operators where appropriate.

  These things may seem like silly details, but it makes the sources
  easier for me to read, and since I'm the default maintainer of
  everything in Octave, I find it important enough that I usually end up
  doing it myself, and that just slows down the process of including
  patches.

I've also been having a discussion with Etienne Grossmann about how to
speed up acceptance of patches.

I admit that I am sometimes slow and unresponsive.  Part of the
problem is that I am busy.  Part of the problem is that the patches
often have problems.  I hope that we can arrive at some way to make
things go faster.

I'm concerned that applying any patch no matter how it is written,
will make the sources less coherent, harder to read, and ultimately,
harder to maintain.  It would help me if people would follow the
coding conventions of the existing Octave sources when submitting
patches, but I'd like to know whether people think it is an
unreasonable request.

Thanks,

jwe