[new function/changeset] thought/request for ishandle()

[Ben Abbott]

On Tuesday, October 14, 2008, at 10:01AM, "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo.che.wisc.edu> wrote:
>On 14-Oct-2008, Ben Abbott wrote:
>
>| The isfigure() and ishghandle() functions are quite similar. I like  
>| those as they make the m-file if-blocks  easier to read. For that  
>| reason I was looking for a similar funcition for axes, but wanted to  
>| include additional information, and decided to try to float a version  
>| of ishande() with properties specified.
>| 
>| In any event, would an isaxes() is a better choice?
>
>What's wrong with
>
>  ishandle (h) && strcmp (get (h, 'type'), 'axes')
>
>?
>
>jwe

This would work fine for axes. My motivation was originally for application of plotyy where I'd hoped to mimic the behavior of the Matlab version. Where it appeared to me they looked for a second axis with the same parent figure and with the same position as the current axes.

As a lot of new m-code using handles will be written for Octave in the near future, I thought it prudent to inquire as to whether an ishandle_with_props() function would be attractive to others, or if an isaxes() function would make sense Since there already are ishghandle() and isfigure(), the latter would be more consistent with the current code. However, none of those are supported by Matlab so opting for a general solution might be preferred.

I'd appreciate some direction on what you and others think is a proper strategy to pursue. 

Ben