CODEWITHSUNDEEP
functioncommandoctave
Anirudhan J
Anirudhan J

Reputation: 2072

Octave log(a) vs log a

In octave what is the difference between log(a) and log a?

>>a
a =

   1   2

>>log(a)
ans =

   0.00000   0.69315

>>log a
ans =  4.5747

Upvotes: 1

Views: 422

Answers (1)

manlio
manlio

Reputation: 18952

In the second example, Octave is interpreting 'a' as a char, converting 'a' to its ASCII representation (97) and then getting the natural logarithm.

log(97) = 4.5747

In general you have two ways to call functions: as a function or as a command. E.g.

save('test.txt')
save test.txt

When a function is used as a command, it assumes the input is a string.

Anyway newer version of Matlab and Octave have an error check for character input (there is little reason to compute the logarithm of the ASCII equivalent of a character).

Upvotes: 2

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