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+## Copyright (C) 2005 Laurent Mazet
+##
+## This program 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 2 of the License, or
+## (at your option) any later version.
+##
+## This program 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 this program; if not, write to the Free Software
+## Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
+
+## -*- texinfo -*-
+## @deftypefn {Function File} {@var{m} =} cell2mat (@var{c})
+## Convert the cell array @var{c} into a matrix by concatenating all
+## elements of @var{c} into a hyperrectangle.  Elements of @var{c} must
+## be numeric, logical or char, and @code{cat} must be able to
+## concatenate them together.
+## @end deftypefn
+##
+## @seealso{mat2cell, num2cell}
+
+function m = cell2mat (c)
+
+  if (nargin != 1)
+    usage ("m = cell2mat (c)");
+  endif
+
+  if (! iscell (c))
+    error ("cell2mat: c is not a cell array");
+  endif
+  
+  nb = numel (c);
+
+  if (nb == 0)
+    m = [];
+  elseif (nb == 1)
+    elt = c{1};
+    if (isnumeric (elt) || ischar (elt) || islogical (elt))
+      m = elt;
+    elseif (iscell (elt))
+      m = cell2mat (elt);
+    else
+      error ("cell2mat: all elements of cell array must be numeric, logical or char");
+    endif
+  else
+    ## n dimensions case
+    for k = ndims (c):-1:2,
+      sz = size (c);
+      sz(end) = 1;
+      c1 = cell (sz);
+      for i = 1:(prod (sz))
+        c1{i} = cat (k, c{i:(prod (sz)):end});
+      endfor
+      c = c1;
+    endfor
+    m = cat (1, c1{:});
+  endif
+
+endfunction
+
+## Tests
+%!shared C, D, E, F
+%! C = {[1], [2 3 4]; [5; 9], [6 7 8; 10 11 12]};
+%! D = C; D(:,:,2) = C;
+%! E = [1 2 3 4; 5 6 7 8; 9 10 11 12];
+%! F = E; F(:,:,2) = E;
+%!assert (cell2mat (C), E);
+%!test
+%! if ([1e6,1e4,1] * str2num (split (version, '.')) > 2010064)
+%!   assert (cell2mat (D), F);  % crashes octave 2.1.64
+%! endif
+## Demos
+%!demo
+%! C = {[1], [2 3 4]; [5; 9], [6 7 8; 10 11 12]};
+%! cell2mat (C)