Re: [Gretl-devel] grabbing Alfred
On Tue, 20 Aug 2013, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti wrote:
On Mon, 19 Aug 2013, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Aug 2013, Allin Cottrell wrote:
>
> So here's a suggestion: when we determine that a certain column of a
> CSV file represents a string-valued variable, by default we treat
> all non-blank values as string literals. But we provide a "set"
> variable ("missing_string" or some such) so that the user can
> specify a missing-code for string-valued input. E.g. when reading
> from Alfred's tab-separated files one could say
>
> set missing_string "."
>
> (This would not just be for "join", but for any delimited-text
> read.)
We already have "set csv_na"; we could use that.
That occurred to me too, but I think it would be confusing. The
(only) role of "set csv_na" at present is to set the string used to
represent NA on _output_ of CSV from gretl. This string may be
specific to the anticipated use of gretl's CSV output by a
third-party program (e.g. Stata or Ox, which have their own notions
of what represents NA).
But what we're talking about now is the string to interpret as NA on
_input_ of string-valued variables from CSV. This string may be
specific to the third-party producer of the CSV file (e.g. Alfred).
The string that's appropriate for one of these uses is not
necessarily appropriate for the other use; or to put it differently,
"set csv_na" (used as per its current role) could have unwanted
side-effects if it were also to govern the reading of string-valued
variables from CSV subsequently.
Allin