Question about short circuit operators

[Robert T. Short]

Before I submit a bug report, maybe someone can tell me that I am 
missing something.  Why would the following happen?

consider the following code contained in a file 'somefunc.m'


function [q] = somefunc(x,y,z)

  if ( (nargin==1) | (nargin==2) )
    error('die goatsucking pig');
  end

end

from octave, I get

octave:1> somefunc()
warning: /home/rtshort/Mirrored/octave/Sources/00Bugs/somefunc.m: 
possible Matlab-style short-circuit operator at line 3, column 20


I am running octave 3.4.0 on a debian linux (stable) system.  I compiled 
from the sources by

>hg update release-3-4-x

and then doing the normal build.  The branch head (I think) when I made 
the build was 357d593d87c1.

Bob