error: 'y' undefined near line 8 column 12 error: called from computeCost at line 8 column 3 - octave

Question

error: 'y' undefined near line 8 column 12
error: called from computeCost at line 8 column 3
Here is my code:
1;
function J = computeCost(X, y, theta)
%COMPUTECOST Compute cost for linear regression
% J = COMPUTECOST(X, y, theta) computes the cost of using theta as the
% parameter for linear regression to fit the data points in X and y
% Initialize some useful values
m = length(y); % number of training examples
% You need to return the following variables correctly
J = 0;
% ====================== YOUR CODE HERE ======================
% Instructions: Compute the cost of a particular choice of theta
% You should set J to the cost.
J = sum(( X * theta - y ) .^2 )/( 2 * m );
% =========================================================================
end

Answer 1

I am guessing it's an error from Coursera ML course assignment. I think you are trying to run the file which contains the implementation of function computeCost(X, y, theta), not the file which calls the computeCost(,,) function with values of X, y, theta. This is why you are getting the error as you aren't providing y.
Run the file which is calling computeCost() function, not the file which contains the implementation of computeCost() function.
That is:
For Week2 Assignment 1: Run ex1.m file
For Week3 Assignment 2: Run ex2.m file

Answer 2

There are two things happening here. First you are defining your function dynamically as opposed to in its own file; not sure why you would prefer that.
Second, after having defined this computeCost function, you are calling it from a context where you did not pass a y argument (or presumably, you didn't pass any arguments to it, and y happens to be the first one detected as missing inside the function).
Since this is a cost function and your code looks suspiciously like code from Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course on Coursera, I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that you called computeCost from something else that was supposed to use it as a cost function to be optimised, e.g. fminunc. Typically functions like fminunc expect a function handle as an argument, but they expect a very specific function handle too. If you look at the help of fminunc, it states that:
FCN should accept a vector (array) defining the unknown variables,
and return the objective function value, optionally with gradient.
Therefore, if you want to pass a function that is to be computed with three arguments, you need to "wrap" it into your own handle, which you can define on the spot, e.g. #(x) computeCost(x, y, t) (assuming 'y' and 't' exist already).
So, I'm guessing that instead of calling fminunc like so: fminunc( #(x) computeCost(x, y, t),
you probably called it like so: fminunc( #computeCost )
or even like so: fminunc( computeCost ) (which evaluates the function first, rather than pass a function handle as an argument).
Basically, go back to the code given to you by coursera, or read the notes carefully. You're calling things the wrong way.

Answer 3

Actually, you are trying to run a function and you can't run it until you provide the desired no. of parameters. Doing so, you may encounter the following error:
computeCost error: 'y' undefined near line 7 column 12
error: called from computeCost at line 7 column 3
As you see, here I'm calling this function without passing any argument.
SOLUTION:
You can test your code by running 'ex1' script. After that submit your work by calling 'submit' script.