## Copyright (C) 2007-2013 John W. Eaton
##
## This file is part of Octave.
##
## Octave 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 3 of the License, or (at
## your option) any later version.
##
## Octave 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 Octave; see the file COPYING.  If not, see
## <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

## -*- texinfo -*-
## @deftypefn {Function File} {} cast (@var{val}, @var{type})
## Convert @var{val} to data type @var{type}.
##
## The value @var{val} may be modified to fit within the range of the new type.
##
## Examples:
##
## @example
## @group
## cast (-5, "uint8")
##    @result{} 0
## cast (300, "int8")
##    @result{} 127
## @end group
## @end example
##
## @seealso{typecast, int8, uint8, int16, uint16, int32, uint32, int64, uint64, double, single, logical, char}
## @end deftypefn

## Author: jwe

function retval = cast (val, typ)

  if (nargin != 2)
    print_usage ();
  endif

  if (ischar (typ))
    if (any (strcmp (typ, {"int8"; "uint8"; "int16"; "uint16";
                           "int32"; "uint32"; "int64"; "uint64";
                           "double"; "single"; "logical"; "char"})))
      retval = feval (typ, val);
    else
      error ("cast: type name '%s' is not a built-in type", typ);
    endif
  else
    error ("cast: expecting TYPE name as second argument");
  endif

endfunction