confusion with :

[taiwuchiang]

there are some confusion about column ':' here to the converter. But it's not the converter's fault. I would say it's the lousy way or style people write Matlab script.

For example, sometimes people write Matlab in this way:
a = ones(5,1);
b = a(:);

Since a is column vector, there is no need to write b = a(:), it can be just b = a;

Although Matlab doesn't care the difference, m2cpp could get confused.

The generated C++ code for b = a(:) is

b = a(span(0, a.n_cols-1)) ;

which is assigning b = a(0), since a.n_cols = 1.

I am not sure if there is a way to make m2cpp smart enough to be aware of this. But there are some people just writing bad Matlab code.

I will summarize some bad Matlab coding styles that confuse m2cpp and people who use m2cpp should avoid using them later in next report.

[taiwuchiang]

Instead of accommodating bad Matlab coding styles, I guess it's probably easier to give warnings when converting. For example, if the variable a is a vector, then if people write a(:), then m2cpp prints out an error or warning.

I feel it's OK to mandatorily require users to provide type information for every variables they use. C/C++ is a strict typed language. So I think it's reasonable to ask for such type info. And this might save you a lot of works to guess what types they are. Also it gives you better check for errors for things like above.

How do you think? Thanks.

[taiwuchiang]

fixed in dev2