--- a/scripts/ChangeLog	Tue May 06 13:15:26 2008 -0400
+++ b/scripts/ChangeLog	Tue May 06 13:38:07 2008 -0400
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2008-05-06  David Bateman  <dbateman@free.fr>
+
+	* miscellaneous/symvar.m: New function.
+	* miscellaneous/Makefile.in (SOURCES): Add it to the list.
+
 2008-05-04  John W. Eaton  <jwe@octave.org>
 
 	* miscellaneous/dbstack.m: Delete.

--- /dev/null	Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000
+++ b/scripts/miscellaneous/symvar.m	Tue May 06 13:38:07 2008 -0400
@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
+## Copyright (C) 2008  David Bateman
+##
+## 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} {} symvar (@var{s})
+## Identifies the argument names in the function defined by a string.
+## Common constant names such as @code{pi}, @code{NaN}, @code{Inf},
+## @code{eps}, @code{i} or @code{j} are ignored. The arguments that are
+## found are returned in a cell array of strings. If no variables are
+## found then the returned cell array is empty.
+## @end deftypefn
+
+function args = symvar (s)
+  args = argnames (inline (s));
+endfunction