[Gretl-devel] some feedback on system estimation
Hi,
here's some suggestions for how to improve (IMHO) system estimation in
gretl (or hansl for that matter):
1) The basic system spec syntax is a bit awkward:
'system ... end system'
should be like a parenthesis, as in 'if ... endif', 'loop ... endloop'
etc. Hence the keyword 'system' should be at the beginning of the line.
So instead of:
mysysname <- system
...
end system
it would be better to have:
system -> mysysname
...
end system
or something like that. (Of course such a syntax reform would be
something for gretl 2.0.)
2) It would be nice if the system spec could be built programatically in
a script,
e.g. something like:
<hansl>
mysysname <- system
loop foreach i myendoglist
equation $i myregressorlist
endloop
end system
</hansl>
3) And finally a general (and old) topic: I thought variable identifiers
could now be longer than 15 chars in a script, but I get an error with
list names that become longer than that. As I keep repeating every once
a while (now's a good opportunity) I still find that restrictive, makes
scripts harder to read because we have to use less descriptive,
self-explanatory names.
Cheers,
sven