Consider the attached code tst_err_reporting.m

function tst_err_reporting (do_anon = true)
  disp ("Entered function 'tst_err_reporting'");

  subfunction1 (do_anon);

end

function subfunction1 (do_anon)
  disp ("Entered function 'tst_err_reporting>subfunction1'");

  fanon = @(x) x + 1;

  if (do_anon)
    fanon (1, 2);   % Will cause a parse error
  else
    error ("calling error() function from 'subfunction1'");
  end

end

When run in Octave the output is

error: @<anonymous>: function called with too many inputs
error: called from
    subfunction1>@<anonymous>
    tst_err_reporting>subfunction1 at line 14 column 5
    tst_err_reporting at line 4 column 3
Entered function 'tst_err_reporting'
Entered function 'tst_err_reporting>subfunction1'

In Matlab, the strings from disp() are printed on stdout before the final error backtrace.  This seems more logical as the code executes from top to bottom and one would expect the messages to come out in the order in which they were executed.

I think error() should probably be flushing stdout before it proceeds to write to stderr.  There are similarities with bug #63806.