[Scilab-users] Replacing predef() with an actual varprot(): a top-5 priority for Scilab 6.1 <= At last, protecting user variables one by one

[Samuel Gougeon]

Hello,

Scilab 6.0 is released. With respect to previous major releases, the 
storage and management of variables have been completely changed. This 
was one of the major purposes for this release.

Yet, after 30 years of development of this high level software, we are 
still unable to protect any user variable against clearing, and there 
are no news on this side. There are many oitlying developments, whereas 
this central feature is still unavailable. The pseudo function predef() 
is still here, alone, never ever actually usable.

Indeed, predef() is unable to protect variables one by one, at any 
moment after the session startup. As its name states it, predef() has 
been designed exclusively to protect *predef*ined variables %i, %pi, etc 
during the startup process. It is a startup *internal*, and we could 
wonder why it has been documented.

One of the most disturbing and buggy consequences of this missing 
feature is that it is still  impossible to protect a library that has 
been loaded during the session, i.e. not autoloaded at startup. Any 
/clear/ instruction -- so loved by many former Matlabers in their 
scripts -- kills all such libraries.

The need for a true customizable function to protect/unprotect variables 
was reported as soon as 2004 -- and likely even before --, so 13 years 
ago. For the only bugzilla reports, please see for instance:

http://bugzilla.scilab.org/686
http://bugzilla.scilab.org/8634
http://bugzilla.scilab.org/10988

Scilab has still some central weaknesses like this one.
IMO, implementing varprot() should be a top priority.

Don't you need this feature as well?

Best regards

Samuel Gougeon

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