## Copyright (C) 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
##               2008, 2009 Kurt Hornik
##
## 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} {} str2mat (@var{s_1}, @dots{}, @var{s_n})
## Return a matrix containing the strings @var{s_1}, @dots{}, @var{s_n} as
## its rows.  Each string is padded with blanks in order to form a valid
## matrix.
##
## This function is modelled after @sc{matlab}.  In Octave, you can create
## a matrix of strings by @code{[@var{s_1}; @dots{}; @var{s_n}]} even if
## the strings are not all the same length.
## @end deftypefn

## Author: Kurt Hornik <Kurt.Hornik@wu-wien.ac.at>
## Adapted-By: jwe

## Deprecated in version 3.2

function retval = str2mat (varargin)
  persistent warned = false;
  if (! warned)
    warned = true;
    warning ("Octave:deprecated-function",
             "str2mat is obsolete and will be removed from a future version of Octave; please use char instead.");
  endif

  retval = char (varargin{:});

endfunction