[Gretl-devel] Re: new outfile option --tempfile
Am 14.08.2019 um 23:48 schrieb Allin Cottrell:
I've noticed that some function packages make use of
"home-made"
functions to create a temporary file in the user's dotdir. These
probably work fine in most cases, but they're not safe against race
conditions and I thought we should have a "proper" way of doing the job.
That's now provided by outfile. You say
outfile foo --tempfile
where "foo" is either the name of an existing string variable or a valid
hansl identifier that's not yet used for any object.
Thanks Allin. The problem I see is that 'outfile' typically accepts also
literal (even [only?] unquoted) filename strings, as in the
documentation example:
outfile outer.txt
Your description of the --tempfile option sounds as if only string
variables are possible there.
Actually the automatic creation of a non-declared string object is also
a bit unusual for hansl, no? For example bwrite or mwrite don't seem to
do that. Not sure yet about the best syntactic solution.
cheers
sven