Re: [Gretl-devel] beginner's (but understandable) problem on the console
On Tue, 13 Mar 2018, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Am 13.03.2018 um 00:13 schrieb Summers, Peter:
> If you mean being able to do something like (assuming m has been
> defined)
>
> <console>
> rows(m)
> </console>
> instead of
> <console>
> r = rows(m)
> r
> </console>
Exactly.
Though of course you don't have to take two lines over it as things
stand: the real comparison is "eval rows(m)" versus plain "rows(m)".
> Maybe this just reflects my Matlab background, but it's
always
> struck me as inefficient on gretl's part.
Not just Matlab, but also R, Python, Julia, you name it.
What you're suggesting (making "eval" implicit for any input line that
doesn't make sense as a command or function call) could probably be
done, but there's a relevant difference between the languages you
mention and hansl. Unlike hansl, none of those languages have
commands, they all work purely via functions. So if a given input line
is not a function call it can immediately be taken as an "eval"
request.
Other languages that have commands -- bash, stata, for example, and I
suspect other econometrics software such as RATS, Eviews, Limdep --
don't do the "automatic-eval" thing. By default they're expecting a
command-word, if not a function call.
At present we print one line of text when the console is opened,
apprising the user of 'help'. Maybe we could add a second line,
something like "You can use 'eval' to evaluate any expression".
Allin