2.7.3 Comments and the Help System

The help command (see Getting Help) is able to find the first block of comments in a function and return those as a documentation string. This means that the same commands used to get help on built-in functions are available for properly formatted user-defined functions. For example, after defining the function f below,

     function xdot = f (x, t)
     
     # usage: f (x, t)
     #
     # This function defines the right-hand
     # side functions for a set of nonlinear
     # differential equations.
     
       r = 0.25;
       ...
     endfunction

the command help f produces the output

      usage: f (x, t)
     
      This function defines the right-hand
      side functions for a set of nonlinear
      differential equations.

Although it is possible to put comment lines into keyboard-composed, throw-away Octave programs, it usually isn't very useful because the purpose of a comment is to help you or another person understand the program at a later time.

The help parser currently only recognizes single line comments (see Single Line Comments) and not block comments for the initial help text.