--- /dev/null
+## Copyright (C) 2012 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{style}, @var{color}, @var{marker}, @var{msg}] =} colstyle (@var{linespec})
+## Parse @var{linespec} and return the line style, color, and markers given.
+## In the case of an error, the string @var{msg} will return the text of the
+## error.
+## @end deftypefn
+
+function [l, c, m, msg] = colstyle (style)
+
+ if (nargin != 1)
+ print_usage ();
+ endif
+
+ if (! ischar (style))
+ error ("colstyle: STYLE must be a string");
+ endif
+
+ try
+ opt = __pltopt__ ("colstyle", style);
+ l = opt.linestyle;
+ c = opt.color;
+ m = opt.marker;
+ msg = [];
+ switch (c)
+ case [0 0 0]
+ c = "k";
+ case [1 0 0]
+ c = "r";
+ case [0 1 0]
+ c = "g";
+ case [0 0 1]
+ c = "b";
+ case [1 1 0]
+ c = "y";
+ case [1 0 1]
+ c = "m";
+ case [0 1 1]
+ c = "c";
+ case [0 1 1]
+ c = "w";
+ endswitch
+ catch
+ l = c = m = [];
+ msg = lasterr ();
+ end_try_catch
+
+endfunction
+
+%!test
+%! [l, c, m, msg] = colstyle ("r:x");
+%! assert (isempty (msg));
+%! assert (l, ":");
+%! assert (c, "r");
+%! assert (m, "x");
+
+%!test
+%! [l, c, m, msg] = colstyle (".");
+%! assert (isempty (msg));
+%! assert (l, "none");
+%! assert (c, []);
+%! assert (m, ".");
+
+%!test
+%! [l, c, m, msg] = colstyle ("~");
+%! assert (msg, "colstyle: unrecognized format character: `~'");
+
+%% Test input validation
+%!error colstyle ()
+%!error colstyle (1, 2)
+%!error colstyle (1.5)
+