[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #59719] dec2bin issues an error for non-integer inputs while Matlab does not

[Rik]

Update of bug #59719 (project octave):

        Operating System:       Microsoft Windows => Any                    
                 Summary: dec2bin does not work for real numbers (compared to
matlab) => dec2bin issues an error for non-integer inputs while Matlab does
not

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Follow-up Comment #1:

Octave is purposefully more strict than Matlab on input validation.  It seeks
to prevent Garbage In / Garbage Out calculations that the programmer might not
have realized.  For example, Matlab also does not translate floating point
numbers that are not integers.  What it does instead it makes a particular
choice about how to transform floating point values to integers and it does
not inform the user that it is doing so.  I think it is more useful to alert
the programmer that the data, which they expected to be integer, is not.  Then
they can make an informed decision about how the transform should occur.  Both
Matlab and Octave offer floor(), ceil(), fix(), and round() which accomplish
the transformation, but with different characteristics.  It is up to the
programmer to decide on the best option for their data.

The use of "non-negative integers" to indicate the numbers [0, 1, 2, ...]
seems more accurate than "natural number" which I was not familiar with.  I
looked it up on Wikipedia and I saw this, "Some definitions, including the
standard ISO 80000-2,[4][a] begin the natural numbers with 0, corresponding to
the non-negative integers 0, 1, 2, 3, ... (often collectively denoted by the
symbol N, or N0 for emphasizing that zero is included), whereas others start
with 1, corresponding to the positive integers 1, 2, 3, ... (sometimes
collectively denoted by the symbol N, or N1 for emphasizing that zero is
excluded)."  So there is a potential confusion which is not present when using
"non-negative integers". 

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