[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #56809] Dots in script file names should be allowed

[Michael Leitner]

Follow-up Comment #3, bug #56809 (project octave):

No, I wouldn't touch parsing. I see that it won't be possible to have
arithmetic operators, dots and the like in function names, but script names
don't need to be parsed. What I am proposing is that only if parsing errors
out or if it finds that some tokens it has identified as operands are
undefined, it is tried whether the _whole command string_  is an existing
script file name. Thus, if it should happen that if you have a struct "script"
defined that has a field "a", you wouldn't be able to call the script
"script.a.m" by issuing the command "script.a", but in all other cases you
would. You would even be able to name a script "a=b.m" and call it the normal
way as long as b does not exist (I don't claim that this would be a good
idea). 

By the way, I have just found out that the interpreter (I don't know if this
is the correct concept, what I mean is the stage of octave that takes the
tokens returned by the parser and evaluates them) does have some notion of
scripts: when you have script.m, calling


script(1)


returns "invalid use of script /tmp/script.m in index expression", while 


script+1


returns "invalid call to script /tmp/script.m". I would have expected
"'script' undefined near line ...", which is returned if script.m does not
exist. Is there a reason for that? Can script names (that is, not as a string
object delimited by quotes) in any sense be part of a regular command apart
from making up the whole of the command? Couldn't thus the process be actually
simplified by not having to check tokens against string names, and only if a
parsing error occurs or some token is undefined, try to read the _whole
command_ as script name?


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