Symbolic routine sym

[Donald MacKinnon]

I'm having a problem with a the symbolic routine sym(). x=sym('x') works 
fine.

An application I've found uses the routine sym('','real'). It is not 
clear if they're using Octave or Matlab.

Octave expects a single argument and fails with:
"single error: one argument expected"

Using a single agreement then causes a routine at a lower level to fail 
with:

"error: can't perform indexed assignment for ex type
error: assignment failed, or no method for `ex = ex'"

It could be that the function sym() in Matlab say was compiled as an 
overloaded function. (a guess)

If anyone knows of a work around I'd be pleased to try it out.
I'm running Mandriva 2009.0 with all updates executed.


Thank you for any help.

Regards, Donald