Re: Standard example datasets

[Carnë Draug]

On Sat, 27 Apr 2019 at 21:02, Andrew Janke <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Hi, Octave maintainers,
>
> Some other statistical programs ship with standard example datasets and
> methods to load or explore them. Does Octave have something like this?
>
> For example, R ships with a bunch of example datasets in its "datasets"
> package, and you can view a list of them by doing `data()`. And Matlab
> ships with a bazillion example datasets that seem to all be just MAT
> files in its source code root directories, that you can access with
> load, like `load patients`.
>
> Use case: I'm working on table stuff, and would like to add some example
> tabular datasets in my package. Wondering if there's a standard
> mechanism I should integrate with.
>

Matlab also comes with such datasets.  Ideally we would have the same
so that examples that use them work in Octave as well.  It would also
simplify some test cases which require generation of input data (I
would arguee that would actually enable them because if generation of
such complex datasets is too complicated then there's no tests for
them).

Anyway, there is already an item on the tracker [1] that lists the
ones in Matlab.  The issue is finding who is the copyright holder of
such data and contact them.

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?9544