The help command (see Commands for 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.