Re: [Gretl-devel] max identifier length
Am 04.10.2012 21:39, schrieb Allin Cottrell:
On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Sven Schreiber wrote:
> Am 03.10.2012 19:58, schrieb Allin Cottrell:
>> In gretl CVS I have now made a lot of small changes which
>> should permit an easy switch of the max legnth of names of
>> variables, governed by the definition of VNAMELEN in
>> lib/src/libgretl.h.
>>
>> The changes may of course have introduced some errors, so I'd
>> be grateful if people could test things, in particular looking
>> for any broken printout.
>
> Allin,
> I really appreciate your efforts, since I would like it a lot if one (I)
> could use longer identifiers. And to be honest, while I wouldn't want to
> be responsible for a state of (relative) chaos due to my suggestion, I
> really think that in the longer term and/or for gretl 2.0 a 15-char
> limit is too restrictive, also in comparison with other packages or
> languages.
OK, encouraged by this I've changed VNAMELEN to 32 in CVS and
snapshots. At this point I'm treating this as experimental,
and I haven't changed statements in the docs regarding the
maximum length of identifiers.
Thanks, I think this is a very sensible limit. Just one further
question, isn't there some 31-character identifier length thingy in C?
As I'm relatively C-ignorant I don't quite remember what that really
was, just out of curiosity, since gretl is built on C, could that become
relevant?
Please test! The first priority is to ensure that the changes
don't break anything when identifiers are kept to the 15
character limit. The next task is to fix up any broken-looking
printout (or other bugs) when longer names are used.
I will, and report back if I find any problem!
cheers,
sven