inconsistent row <-> column sub-vector behavior

[Sergei Steshenko]

--- On Fri, 8/22/08, John W. Eaton <jwe at bevo.che.wisc.edu> wrote:

> From: John W. Eaton <jwe at bevo.che.wisc.edu>
> Subject: inconsistent row <-> column sub-vector behavior
> To: sergstesh at yahoo.com
> Cc: bug-octave at octave.org
> Date: Friday, August 22, 2008, 8:33 AM
> On 22-Aug-2008, Sergei Steshenko wrote:
> 
> | column_vector(2:vector_length) =
> row_vector(2:vector_length)
> 
> This is allowed for compatibility.
> 
> | column_vector(2:vector_length) +=
> row_vector(2:vector_length)
> 
> All the OP= operators are simply syntactic sugar for
> 
>   LHS = LHS OP RHS
> 
> so will fail if LHS OP RHS is non-conformant.
> 
> I don't think this is a bug.
> 
> jwe

Intuitively it's a bug; LHS type (row or column) is known even before
the OP=, so the necessary type conversion routine can be called easily
and early enough by the interpreter.

At all, in a type-loose language if I deal with vectors, why should I care
about its column or row nature ? 

But, anyway, the deciding factor should be Matlab compatibility, shouldn't
it ?

Again, could anyone please check how Matlab behaves ?

Thanks,
  Sergei.