Re: [Gretl-devel] The mysterious stack() function

Am 10.09.2018 um 02:30 schrieb Allin Cottrell: > > > And I thereby left the business unresolved! Here's an attempt at > resolution. It turns out that the problem for which stack() provides a > solution is pretty easily handled by > > series -> matrix -> reshape matrix -> series > > ... > > So here's a suggestion: in section 4.5 of the Guide I delete the discussion > of the fix using the mysterious stack() in favour of an example and > explanation of the method illustrated above. > > Should I do that? If so, stack would then be undocumented, but we could > keep it for the time being for backward compatibility. Thanks for the suggestion. What I like about it is to clean up the gretl syntax and remove that "oddball", as you called it. However, replacing a built-in command/function/whatever by a description of a relatively more advanced scripting solution is not optimal IMO. First I thought the functionality of stack() (and of your solution) could be merged into the 'dataset' or the 'setobs' command -- but actually the description in the guide ch.4 and the whole business of stack() is to read in data from external files. So wouldn't 'join' be a natural candidate for this stuff? So from a user's point of view the first stack() example in section 4.5 would become something like this: join panel.txt x1 --panelstack --length=50 join panel.txt x2 --panelstack --length=50 --offset=50 (Perhaps a --no-header option might be needed, but OTOH it might be implicit in --panelstack.)