[Gretl-devel] Re: string vs. strings (array) type issues (and bundles)

On Thu, 12 Aug 2021, Sven Schreiber wrote: > Am 02.06.2021 um 00:45 schrieb Sven Schreiber: > >> Secondly, however, if I want to stuff such a single string into a bundle >> as an array, I get an error: >> <hansl> >> bundle b = null >> strings b.S = "A" # error: expected strings, got string >> </hansl> >> >> Note that doing this without the bundle works fine, as expected: >> <hansl> >> strings aS = "A" >> print aS    # gives 1-element strings array >> </hansl> > > Another dangling thread... > > Is the first thing a bug? Not sure, as in principle you might say that > the second thing isn't really supported, we just got lucky. My take would be "just got lucky". I don't think "as expected" applies here; it's nowhere documented that you can create an array just by providing a single object. Admittedly there's a deliberate bit of internal coding that supports this in the simple case, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. It would be quite tricky to generalize it fully (allowing it for array-elements as well as bundle-members, and for inflected assignment). My inclination would be remove auto-promotion of obj to array-of-obj and insist on defarray(), but if that creates a compatibility problem just leave things as they are.