--- /dev/null
+## Copyright (C) 2003-2012 John W. Eaton
+##
+## 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} {} isstr (@var{a})
+## This function has been deprecated. Use ischar instead.
+## @end deftypefn
+
+## Author: jwe
+
+## Deprecated in version 3.0
+## Matlab still has this function, so don't remove just yet.
+
+function retval = isstr (varargin)
+
+ persistent warned = false;
+ if (! warned)
+ warned = true;
+ warning ("Octave:deprecated-function",
+ "isstr is obsolete and will be removed from a future version of Octave, please use ischar instead");
+ endif
+
+ retval = ischar (varargin{:});
+
+endfunction