comma position in conjuction with \ problem

[Sergei Steshenko]

Hello All,

please see the following session:

"
GNU Octave, version 3.0.3
Copyright (C) 2008 John W. Eaton and others.
This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTIBILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  For details, type `warranty'.

Octave was configured for "i686-pc-linux-gnu".

Additional information about Octave is available at http://www.octave.org.

Please contribute if you find this software useful.
For more information, visit http://www.octave.org/help-wanted.html

Report bugs to <bug at octave.org> (but first, please read
http://www.octave.org/bugs.html to learn how to write a helpful report).

For information about changes from previous versions, type `news'.

octave:1> system("pwd; cat -n comma_position_bug.m");
/home/sergei/junk
     1  foo = \
     2    {\
     3    "a", \
     4    "b"
     5    };
     6
     7  bar = \
     8    {\
     9    "a" \
    10   ,"b"
    11    };
octave:2> source("/home/sergei/junk/comma_position_bug.m")
parse error near line 10 of file /home/sergei/junk/comma_position_bug.m

  syntax error

>>>  ,"b"
    ^

error: near line 10 of file `/home/sergei/junk/comma_position_bug.m'
error: source: error sourcing file `/home/sergei/junk/comma_position_bug.m'
"

- I believe 'octave' should not report syntax error because '\' is just a
line continuation character in this case, so effectively 'octave' should in
both cases perceive RHS as

{"a","b"}
.

Thanks,
  Sergei.