Evaluation of binary expression

[John W. Eaton]

On  7-Apr-2008, Ben Abbott wrote:

| The behavior you've encountered reflects how my matlab works.
| 
| >> nargin = 4
| 
| nargin =
| 
|      4
| 
| >> ((nargin >= 5) & ~isempty(M1))
| ??? Undefined function or variable 'M1'.
| 
| Thus, in this instance, it appears that Octave works in a manner consistent/compatible with Matlab.
| 
| Perhaps the parser might be modified to respect the behavior you'd prefer, but I have no knowledge of that.

See the "Short-circuit & and | operators" item in the FAQ.

In Matlab, & and | only short circuit inside IF or WHILE conditions.
But (as you note) not outside them.  That is a "feature" definitely
*not* worth copying.  Bad Matlab.

jwe