I'm currently using MATLAB's fdatool for filter design. Using that tool, I can easily design different kind of filters. For example, let's take a band-pass FIR filter with 10-40 Hz passband, and 5-10 Hz and 40-45 Hz transition bands. Usually, I design the filter with the selection "least-squares", which, if I understand correctly, uses the aforementioned method to find the best impulse response according to filter spesifications. To actually filter the signal, I use the command filtfilt, which does zero-phase FIR filtering.
Now, an alternative way to implement the filter would be to take the FFT of my signal, set frequencies outside the range 10-40 Hz as zeros, and then take the IDFT.
Is there any practical/theoretical difference between these two approaches? Will the frequency responses (magnitude and phase) be the same?