bin2dec behavior different from Matlab?

[Miguel Bazdresch]

Hello,

In my teaching I encourage students to use Octave, but some of them 
cling to Matlab. Today we found different behavior between the two:

In Octave, both 3.4 and 3.6,

> s=num2str([1 0 1])
s = 1   0   1
> bin2dec(s)
ans =  257

In Matlab (version 2009), the same commands result in number 5.

I believe Octave is interpreting the spaces in 's' as zeros, which 
explain the answer of 257. In any case, this difference in behavior is 
something we may want to address. Personally, I find Matlab's behavior 
to be more reasonable and useful in this particular case.

Best regards,

--
Miguel Bazdresch