functions with 'named' arguments

[Shai Ayal]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Dupuis <Pascal.Dupuis at worldonline.be> wrote:
>
>
>
>  Jaroslav Hajek-2 wrote:
>  >
>  > Indeed. But in Octave (and C,C++) it would create a syntax clash.
>  >
>
> > Perhaps. Unfortunately, it would also add a level of confusion for
>  > those not used to
>  > keyword argument calls, but used to assignment expressions.
>  >
>  >
>  For the first remark: a grep on all files under /usr/share/octave/3.0.0/
>  showed that the pattern
>  '([^<>!=)]*=[^=)]*)' is only found within strings or if clauses. So the
>  pattern of default arguments seems not yet used inside Octave sources.
>
>  For the second remark: after reading a R tutorial, the notion doesn't look
>  confusing at all.
>
>  Now for some more substancials comments. A possible target for this 'named
>  arguments' paradigm is low-level functions. That is, functions which are
>  called often. Using such paradigm within the octave interpreter means faster
>  execution. Using parseparams means more code, more function calls, more
>  computer cycles, and so forth.
>  My vision is that this named argument paradigm brings a level of simplicity.
>  You have f.i. to cope with various statistical functions, you know they have
>  parameters called 'mean' and 'sd'.  You just construct  the calls this way:
>  somefunc(mean = this, sd = that). The interpreter will perform the matching.
>  So if you have two sets of functions written by two teams with different
>  calling conventions, you don't have to construct the call accordingly and
>  use either if construct either eval(). Handled within the Octave
>  interpreter, it's faster.
>
>  Regards
>

Pascal,

I think that the main problem is that you are proposing an addition
which is an improvement over matlab. You will have a hard time finding
someone to implement it since most of the effort is currently aimed at
providing better matlab compatibility.
So as a feature request this is nice, but it probably won't get
implemented in the near future.
However, If you instead submit a patch then it will greatly enhance
the probability of having this in octave.

Shai