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+## Copyright (C) 2008 David Bateman
+##
+## 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/>.
+
+## -*- texinfo -*-
+## @deftypefn {Function File} {@var{b} =} saveobj (@var{a})
+## Method of a class to manipulate an object prior to saving it to a file. 
+## The function @code{saveobj} is called when the object @var{a} is saved 
+## using the @code{save} function. An example of the use of @code{saveobj}
+## might be to remove fields of the object that don't make sense to be saved
+## or it might be used to ensure that certain fields of the object are
+## initialized before the object is saved. For example
+##
+## @example
+## @group
+## function b = saveobj (a)
+##   b = a;
+##   if (isempty (b.field))
+##      b.field = initfield(b);
+##   endif
+## endfunction
+## @end group
+## @end example
+##
+## @seealso{loadobj, class}
+## @end deftypefn
+
+function b = saveobj (a)
+  error ("saveobj: not defined for class \"%s\"", class(a));
+endfunction