new file mode 100755
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/gendoc.pl
@@ -0,0 +1,73 @@
+#! /usr/bin/perl -w
+#
+# Copyright (C) 2012 Rik Wehbring
+#
+# This file is part of Octave.
+#
+# Octave 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 3 of the License, or (at
+# your option) any later version.
+#
+# Octave 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 Octave; see the file COPYING.  If not, see
+# <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+unless (@ARGV > 1) { die "Usage: $0 df-file1 ..." }
+
+print <<__END_OF_MSG__;
+### DO NOT EDIT!
+###
+### This file is generated automatically from Octave source files.
+### Edit source files directly and run make to update this file.
+
+__END_OF_MSG__
+
+DFFILE: foreach $df_fname (@ARGV)
+{
+  open (DF_FH, $df_fname) or die "Unable to open $df_fname";
+
+  $src_fname = "";
+  @func_list = ();
+  @docstr = ();
+
+  LINE: while (<DF_FH>)
+  {
+    if (/XDEFUN_FILE_NAME \("([^"]+)"/)
+    {
+      $src_fname = $1;
+      next LINE;
+    }
+    if (/XDEF/ and ! /XDEFALIAS/) 
+    {
+      ## Decode 4 or 5 part macro definition.
+      ($func, $str) = /\("?(\w+)"?,[^,]+,[^,]+,(?:[^,]+,)?\s*"(.*)"\)\s*$/ ;
+
+      unless ($func) { die "Unable to parse $df_fname at line $.\n" }
+
+      push (@func_list, $func);
+      ## Do escape sequence expansion
+      $str =~ s/(?<!\\)\\n/\n/g;
+      $str =~ s/\\([^\\])/$1/g;
+      $str =~ s/\\\\/\\/g;
+      push (@docstr, $str);
+    }
+  }
+  close (DF_FH);
+
+  ## Print results in DOCSTRING format
+  foreach $i (0 .. $#func_list)
+  {
+    $func = $func_list[$i];
+    print "$func\n";
+    print "\@c $func $src_fname\n";
+    print $docstr[$i],"\n";
+  }
+
+}
+