--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/main/strings/strncmp.m	Wed Oct 10 19:54:49 2001 +0000
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+## Copyright (C) 2000  Bill Lash
+##
+## This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+## it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
+## (at your option) any later version.
+##
+## This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+## but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
+## GNU General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
+## Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
+
+## usage: strncmp (s1, s2, n)
+##
+## Compare the first n characters of two strings, returning 1 if
+## they are the same, and 0 otherwise.
+##
+## Note: For compatibility with Matlab, Octave's strncmp function
+## returns 1 if the strings are equal, and 0 otherwise.  This is
+## just the opposite of the corresponding C library function.
+
+## Author: Bill Lash (lash@tellabs.com)
+
+function status = strncmp(s1, s2, n)
+
+  if (nargin != 3)
+    usage ("strncmp (s, t, n)");
+  endif
+
+  status = 0;		# Assume strings are different
+  if (isstr (s1) && isstr(s2))
+    c1 = columns (s1);
+    c2 = columns (s2);
+    if (n < 1)		
+			# Comparing less than 1 character of the string
+      status = 0;	# will always say they are not equal (for Matlab
+		        # compatibility
+
+    elseif ((n <= c1) && (n <= c2))
+       status = strcmp(s1(:,1:n),s2(:,1:n));
+    else 
+       status = 0;
+    endif
+  endif
+
+endfunction
+