Re: [Gretl-devel] identifier name length
On Sat, 29 Sep 2012, Sven Schreiber wrote:
On 09/28/2012 11:34 PM, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Sep 2012, Sven Schreiber wrote:
>
>> a neverending story, sorry for continuing it: I thought the 15-character
>> limit on identifier names only applies to series for display reasons.
>> Now I got an error about a matrix identifier being too long. (September
>> cvs build.)
>>
>> Maybe that has to do with displaying matrices as icons?
>
> Not really, since the icon view has a facility for ellipsizing
> identifiers that are too long. I guess we could allow longer matrix
> names if there's really a use-case for them.
First a clarification question: So the status quo is that the 15-char
limit is for (and only for) series and matrices?
No, right now that limit applies to all gretl variables:
series, matrices, scalars, strings, bundles. Function names,
however, have a maximum length of 31 characters.
My argument: AFAIR the justification for the 15-char limit had to do
with the output of estimations and tests which involves series' names.
That was fair enough. I don't see a similar reason for matrices' names.
But maybe I'm missing something?
True, the primary reason for limiting the length of series
identifiers lies in the difficulty of re-jigging gretl's many
functions for printing output related to series. Imposing the
same limit on other types of variables just seemed the
"natural" default thing to do. (In C terms, we just use the
VNAMELEN macro for all variable names.)
Allin