I pushed an edited version of this patch after combining and tightening up the new function definitions.

https://hg.savannah.gnu.org/hgweb/octave/rev/fb44a9db1bc6

Works as intended so far in tests. Marking as ready for test.

Do we need to add any new BISTs?

I've attached two patches to introduce a few new functions in ov.h and ov.cc, and to use them elsewhere.

I've retargeted to default instead of stable since the API changes with the addition of new functions.

Without these two patches, in addition to the problems described in comment #0, code like `cell (e, pi)` silently creates a 2x3 cell array, unlike functions like `zeros` and `ones` which at least complain about non-integer dimensions.

With the patches, those missed errors are fixed. Non-boolean values being converted to boolean function inputs now give a warning.

When testing, apply integer.patch first, then the idx_bool.patch next.

(file #55909, file #55910)

There are several instances of xint_value in the codebase like this in the all() DEFUN in data.cc:

  int dim = (nargin == 1 ? -1
             : args(1).xint_value ("all: DIM must be an integer")-1);

This looks like it will trap non-integer inputs to DIM, but nothing happens:

octave:1> all (true(3,3), pi)
ans =
  1  1  1
  1  1  1
  1  1  1

octave:2> all (true(3,3), e)
ans =
  1
  1
  1

octave:3> all (true(3,3), (sqrt(5) + 1) / 2)
ans =
  1  1  1

What is the correct way to trap non-integer input?