Re: [Gretl-devel] beginner's (but understandable) problem on the console
Am 13.03.2018 um 19:02 schrieb Allin Cottrell:
On Tue, 13 Mar 2018, Sven Schreiber wrote:
> Not just Matlab, but also R, Python, Julia, you name it.
What you're suggesting (making "eval" implicit for any input line that
doesn't make sense as a command or function call) could probably be
done, but there's a relevant difference between the languages you
mention and hansl. Unlike hansl, none of those languages have commands,
they all work purely via functions. So if a given input line is not a
function call it can immediately be taken as an "eval" request.
Other languages that have commands -- bash, stata, for example, and I
suspect other econometrics software such as RATS, Eviews, Limdep --
don't do the "automatic-eval" thing. By default they're expecting a
command-word, if not a function call.
Ah, very insightful, yes. Although it has to be said that the ipython
shell does both. (AFAIK its "magic" commands start with a % character,
presumably to make them special and to separate them from the allowed
identifiers in python. But the finite set of gretl commands could
probably be treated in a similar way.)
Also, the gretl console kind of already has a bit of implicit
assumptions built in: For a known object x just typing 'x' is equivalent
to typing 'print x', no?
At present we print one line of text when the console is opened,
apprising the user of 'help'. Maybe we could add a second line,
something like "You can use 'eval' to evaluate any expression".
That would already be helpful I think. Perhaps even include a short
example like 'eval I(2) + 2'.
thanks,
sven