Re: [Gretl-devel] some feedback on system estimation
Am 09.09.2011 14:59, schrieb Allin Cottrell:
On Fri, 9 Sep 2011, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti wrote:
> On Fri, 9 Sep 2011, Hélio Guilherme wrote:
>
>> Well I think that for the length of var names, you could allow 31
>> characters, but when displaying them in reports
>> or printouts requiring column formatting, you would truncate them
>> adding ... to the fixed length.
>> So we would have:
>> IntLoopCountIndexWithAVeryLongName
>>
>> printed
>>
>> IntLoopCountIn...
>>
>> It's the user choice to make variables names distinct at the beginning.
>
> This was discussed at Toruń, and the general consensus seems to be
> that we _may_ adopt some Stata-like policy for truncating overly long
> variable names at output time.
>
> I'm not against this, but I'd rather put it off after release.
Me too ;-) Let's think some more about this after 1.9.6.
Well this sounds a lot like an item for the feature request tracker, so
I might eventually add that there.
In the short run however, allow me to react:
I think the printout problem is certainly a valid point. This made me
think about what's really printed out, isn't it only names of series? If
so, would it be an idea to allow longer names for matrices and other
objects except series? It's not ideal, I know, and it's just a thought.
And in general yes I think it's a cultural/habit thing, where however I
would defend my position: Ideally I use self-descriptive names _and_ add
lots of comments. And given the fact that most code tends to be
under-commented (I doubt that gretl's source would constitute an
exception, for example), making it more readable by using clearer names
for variables helps IMHO. I mean if I look at code that I have written
myself months or years ago, I have a hard time understanding it even
with the long explanatory names. I shudder at the thought of having to
grasp the algorithms with variables named "a", "b", and "c".
But I also
use i for a loop index :-)
cheers,
sven