Q: Can the ':'-character be used for indexing?

"The colon is one of the most useful operators in MATLAB."
-- Matlab reference

Everyone knows how to use colon (:) for selecting to pick out selected rows, columns, and elements of arrays: 
»A(:,j)  %is the j-th column of A
Surprisingly, the character ':' works just the same! 
»A(':',j)  %is the j-th column of A
This feature comes handy if you use dynamic indexing: 
»X=1:5;
 idx=3;
 disp(X(idx));
 idx=2:4;
 disp(X(idx));
 idx=':'; 	%looks better than idx=1:length(X)!
 disp(X(idx));
     3

     2     3     4

     1     2     3     4     5
And how about this? 
X=rand(5,5,5);
idx={2,':',3};
X(idx{:})	% same as X(2,:,3)!
Too bad 'end' does not work the same way...
See also: CELL