[Gretl-devel] Re: [Gretl-users] error with null list
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Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti schrieb:
About data size: no offense taken, sure, but I'd like you to try what happens
with big datasets. In my experience, gretl is actually very efficient. I've
handled datasets with hundreds of thousands of observations much better than
in other packages.
Right, but I guess you wouldn't want to copy huge datasets back and
forth between different engines, binary or not. So then you would
probably use the external engine exclusively w/o a gretl interface.
> What if you start out just with the ability to read in
"bundles" with
> genr/matrix/print commands (for scalars/matrices/text). Essentially just
> opening the file and executing the literal contents as if the user typed
> them in directly. like a limited version of 'run'. That wouldn't be so
> difficult, would it?
Mmmhhh... I don't like this very much. Setting up a specialised version of
"run" that we know in advance is bound to be scrapped soon looks like a waste
of resources to me...
Is it really going to be that soon? :-) But seriously, in my naive mind
that new 'read_bundle' command would initially be like a limited run,
with one big exception: it could be used in functions. But afterwards it
would be extended to be able to do what you described (including models
etc.). Why do you see extending the functionality of 'read_bundle' in
the future as scrapping it?
All I'm saying is that it would be nice if gretl's functions could not
just pass information to the external world (store, outfile), but also
receive/read information.
Think for example of a function package that is written exclusively in
gretl script, no external engine, BUT which has very many (tens,
hundreds?) of parameters. Instead of manually specifying all parameters
every time you run the function, it would be nice to save a parameter
configuration and let the function itself load it. But since currently a
function cannot read any files, that's impossible.
So I think there are use cases for reading files within functions beyond
the one I'm currently interested in.
-sven