# HG changeset patch
# User Arun Giridhar <arungiridhar@gmail.com>
# Date 1654175257 14400
# Node ID 20c9d48487e38decce3acdf7cc66f678f767bda8
# Parent  34cfde95c5fa3ff284dc4065d134924b1412d670# Parent  201e29541ef5594c2d8225f2d7068e4dc06d9131
maint: merge stable to default

diff -r 34cfde95c5fa -r 20c9d48487e3 etc/NEWS.7.md
--- a/etc/NEWS.7.md	Thu Jun 02 11:09:20 2022 +0200
+++ b/etc/NEWS.7.md	Thu Jun 02 09:07:37 2022 -0400
@@ -88,8 +88,15 @@
 
 - For compatibility with command syntax, inplace operators (`+=`, `-=`,
 `*=`, `.*=`, `/=`, `./=`, `\=`, `.\=`, `^=`, `.^=`, `|=`, `&=`) must now
-be followed by a whitespace character.  That was not a requirement in
-previous versions of Octave.
+either be followed by a whitespace character or must not be preceded by a
+whitespace character.  For commands with binary operators (`+`, `-`, `*`,
+ `.*`, `/`, `./`, `\`, `.\`, `^`, `.^`, `|`, `&`, `||`, `&&`) without
+assignment, the same rules apply.  That was not a requirement in previous
+versions of Octave.
+E.g., `a + b`, `a+ b`, or `a+b` are valid if `a` is a variable.  In
+contrast, `a +b` will throw an error if `a` is a variable.  The latter
+example is now interpreted as command syntax expression equivalent to the
+function syntax expression `a ("+b")`.
 
 - The `mldivide` function (i.e., the `\` operator) now uses an LU
 decomposition to solve nearly singular full square matrices.  This is