Re: [OctDev] plans for bfgsmin and related cleanup

[Bill D. <de...@se...>]

On Wed, 22 Mar 2006, Michael Creel wrote:

> Hello all,
> I'm planning on converting the existing bfgsmin (source bfgsmin.cc) to a new 
> function __bfgsmin (source __bfgsmin.cc), and writing a user frontend 
> bfgsmin.m. A couple of questions

What is the benefit of doing this?

> 1) All input checking will be in the .m file frontend. Thus, it will be 
> possible to crash octave by directly calling __bfgsmin with bad 
> arguments. Is that acceptable?

My personal opinion is that every function should do full error checking 
of its arguements.  I know that people are writing web front-ends to 
octave, and that could lead to dangerous code.

The way that I view this is that some day, someone will call __bfgsmin and 
get an error and complain about it.  Then we'll have to add the arguement 
checking anyway, so it should just be added from the beginning.

Bill

-- 
"The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of government
power, not the increase of it."
   -- Woodrow Wilson