Re: functions with 'named' arguments

[Søren Hauberg]

man, 17 03 2008 kl. 09:19 -0700, skrev Dupuis:
> Would itbe possible to implement one of those mechanisms in Octave ? The
> problem I don't see a solution at present is passing multiple optionnal args
> of the same type, with different roles, in a free-form fashion.
We already have default arguments. The following gives an example

function hello (who = "World")
  printf("Hello, %s\n", who);
endfunction

>> hello()
Hello, World
>> hello("Wonderful World")
Hello, Wonderful World

Matlab has (kinda) always had named arguments, and you can do the same
in Octave. The standard syntax for calling a function the looks
something like this:

  my_function(some_normal_argument, "name_of_var", value_of_var)

That is, the user provides the name of variable/option as a string, and
its values as the next parameter. The developer who implements the
function must then check the input for strings, and handle the values
correctly. This can be a bit tedious, but it works. And it's what Matlab
does.

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