Re: [Gretl-devel] reserved words issue
Am 02.03.2018 um 18:15 schrieb Allin Cottrell:
Not so long ago I tightened up on potential trampling of reserved
words
in hansl, one effect being that you can no longer define a variable with
the same name as a built-in function.
I now notice that this provokes an error in the gig printout function,
which defines a scalar named "nobs". At first I thought this must be an
error in the reserved-words apparatus (isn't it just "$nobs", with a
dollar, that's reserved?). But on closer inspection I see we also have a
function nobs(),
Maybe the change was too strict (although I liked it at first). I
vaguely remember a discussion that introducing new built-in functions is
not a problem (as opposed to new commands) because they don't restrict
the namespace as much.
In principle it could now happen that a new built-in function is added
and suddenly breaks existing scripts.
This is basically just a heads-up that I/we need to check all
packages
carefully for such collisions before the next release.
Not so easy!
I think the starting point was that "for" was not a reserved word. The
function-name thing was kind of a secondary issue.
cheers,
sven