[Gretl-devel] Re: questions about Artur's calendar_utils package

Am 01.10.2021 um 15:23 schrieb Artur T.: > Hi > > Am 30.09.21 um 23:03 schrieb Sven Schreiber: >> Maybe there's a case for using an integer arg similar to $pd here, >> allowing values 4 and 12. > > Ah, good point. I've changed the signature to > > <> > function scalar gdate_to_iso8601 (string date "Date string", >                                   string frequency[null] "Frequency of > observation") > </> > > Thus, the "frequency" string parameter is optional. If not passed, the > frequency string is determined by the underlying periodicity as > retrived by the $pd accessor. It's good to give the user the possibility to override the default. Note that $pd has a rather different meaning in a panel dataset. So even if you declare the panel-time to be quarterly, $pd will give you the total time dimension length instead. (Which IMHO is quite confusing, but it is clearly documented.) So I think internally the function must not use $pd if $datatype gives you 3 (panel data code) [or 0 (no data)].

But to avoid misunderstanding: The idea was that (perhaps) the frequency arg might be changed from string to integer. But it's clearly a matter of taste as well.