Re: [Gretl-devel] new string substitution failure

Am 30.10.2014 um 15:56 schrieb Allin Cottrell: > On Thu, 30 Oct 2014, Sven Schreiber wrote: > >> I'm currently editing the function package HIP by Jack and Claudia >> Pigini because I have run into various problems using it. >> >> For example if I simply have it converted to a hansl script and then try >> to run the automatically included sample function call I get the error >> "unexpected @". >> >> The cause is some string substitution after an 'mle' block, below is an >> example of this error in a different context. >> >> I guess this is fallout from the new parser? This is with 1.10.0cvs from >> Oct 24th on Windows 8. > > Take the HIP package first (the function HIP_estimate). Yes, this is > fallout from the new parser, but it's an example of what I mentioned a > while back, namely the greater rigour of the new parser. > > The trouble is that the string substitution token @bar is used > unconditionally with "end mle", but the string variable "bar" is > defined only in the cases where the scalar s has value 1 or 2 (and > these are not the only possible values). The old parser ignored the > undigested would-be string substitution @bar (in case s equals neither > 1 nor 2) while the new one properly rejects it. Aha! Very good to know. Indeed it works when I explicitly assign an empty string to 'bar' in the remaining case. However, the error message wasn't really providing a hint in this direction. > > In the example below @bar is invalid because the nulldata command has > destroyed the variable "bar": you need the --preserve flag with > nulldata. whoops, yes of course -- again, if the error message had said "unknown 'bar'" I would probably found this mistake myself. But I know, implementing informative error messages is easier said than done.

As a general lesson, I guess that a considerable number of packages could be broken now because of similar issues. Not saying that this is a bad thing, but that we need a round of testing.