'system': bug or misunderstanding?

[clerke]

On Friday 04 January 2008 22:29:01 John W. Eaton wrote:
> This is documented, though I suppose not very clearly.  I would
> welcome a patch that improved the doc string.

Is system.texi the right file for the patch?

While looking at a patch for the description, I realized the actual behaviour 
of system (at least in my case) differs significantly from the description.
I'm wondering if there's something wrong with my system now...

For example, the description says:
"To send the output of a command executed with @var{system} through the 
pager, use a command like
disp (system (cmd, 1));"

This doesn't work for me (because system, used like this, returns only the 
exit status). Examples:

octave:58> disp(system("ls", 1))
0
octave:59> system("ls", 1)
ans = 0

In all cases, to get the output returned to octave (rather than stdout) I need 
to specify the second output arg. 
Is this the way everyone else sees it?

wayne