I know this issue has been reported before as well.

I think it would be nice to separate the documentation from parsing of the function, but as jwe notes this may not be trivial.  Given all the other items to tackle in Octave, I think this is pretty low priority.

Also, the workaround is pretty simple.  If there are errors or warnings then simply correct the code (which would need to happen anyways).

This behavior does not seem to be new, but it came as an unexpected suprprise to me, and I am not sure if it is intended behavior.

Here is how to reproduce the behavior:
1. generate a function m-file that as a code "problem" inside, e.g. this one:

## This is my doc string.
function myfunc
  if (1==1)
    disp ("hello")
  elseif
    a = 1
  endif

2. save this function m-file under the corresponding filename, in this example myfunc.m
3. change the current folder to this file's folder.
4. now call "help" to display the help string of this m-file function.

observed result: (with any current Octave version like 8.0.90, 7.3.0, 6.4.0, ..., 4.2.2)

>> help myfunc
warning: suggest parenthesis around assignment used as truth value near line 6, column 7 in file 'C:\...\myfunc.m'
warning: called from
    help at line 103 column 20
[...]

This warning is very true in itself. I was just suprised that the "help" function displays it. There is no problem with the help string of this function, so shouldn't the help function just output this help string without any complaint?

Calling "help myfunc" afterwards for a second time, does NOT produce this warning any more.

Is this intended behavior? Or do we want to change this?