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### E.2 Reporting Bugs

Your bug reports play an essential role in making Octave reliable.

When you encounter a problem, the first thing to do is to see if it is already known. See Trouble. If it isn't known, then you should report the problem.

Reporting a bug may help you by bringing a solution to your problem, or it may not. In any case, the principal function of a bug report is to help the entire community by making the next version of Octave work better. Bug reports are your contribution to the maintenance of Octave.

In order for a bug report to serve its purpose, you must include the information that makes it possible to fix the bug.

If you have Octave working at all, the easiest way to prepare a complete bug report is to use the Octave function `bug_report`. When you execute this function, Octave will prompt you for a subject and then invoke the editor on a file that already contains all the configuration information. When you exit the editor, Octave will mail the bug report for you.

— Function File: bug_report ()

> Have Octave create a bug report template file, invoke your favorite editor, and submit the report to the bug-octave mailing list when you are finished editing.