devtools.dialectLint (TARGET) prints every file that is not written in Octave’s own dialect. TARGET is one file, the folder a package’s source is in, or the name of an installed package.

devtools.dialectLint (TARGET, 'matlab') asks the other question instead: whether MATLAB would accept the file. That is the check to run on a probe before it is sent to a MATLAB machine, where Octave-only syntax fails with a message naming nothing useful.

R = devtools.dialectLint (…) prints nothing and returns the findings as a structure array holding file, line, column, rule and message, empty where there is nothing to report.

A file is read twice. Where it does not parse at all the finding is 'syntax' and names a fault the file has in any dialect; where it parses but the dialect refuses it the finding is 'dialect-octave' or 'dialect-matlab' and carries the line that stopped it. The two are kept apart because a broken file is not a dialect question.

The two names are the two devtools.__parse__ takes, and there is no lenient mode here: whether a file parses as either language is not a dialect question, and is reported as 'syntax' instead.

'octave'

Octave’s own dialect: # comments, ! and !=, and the typed block terminators. A file that passes is one MATLAB cannot read. The two spellings Octave has no alternative for are still accepted, a ~ standing for an ignored output and %! opening a test block.

'matlab'

MATLAB’s: % comments, ~ and ~=, and a bare end. Rejected are the constructs Octave alone has, among them do … until, unwind_protect, compound assignment, ++, an index chained onto a call and an assignment used as an expression.

The parser is a compiled file, so this raises where the package was installed without a working compiler rather than reporting a file clean because nothing read it.

See also: devtools.docLint

Source Code: devtools.dialectLint