Re: [Gretl-devel] A way to read RData files in gretl
On Wed, 27 Sep 2017, Sven Schreiber wrote:
Am 25.09.2017 um 00:29 schrieb oleg_komashko(a)ukr.net:
> During the recent times there were several threads on importing
> RData files into gretl
>
> The attachment contains a function to open RData files in gretl
>
> In contrast to the native foreign importers it requires R
> installed (not a strong requirement, at least on linux, since R
> is included into dependencies list for building gretl)
Thanks Oleh, that sounds very good.
Here is a general comment to all: I think that maybe it is time to
reconsider the policy that gretl function packages must not depend
on R. R has become so widespread, and also we have in gretl the
very nice possibility to define and call your own R functions
directly (see section 38.7 of the user guide), that it almost
seems silly not to leverage all the potential. Even Eviews has
been doing it for a while already.
I agree; I'd be OK with gretl packages that depend on R -- provided
that what they do really requires R, it's not something that can be
done without too much difficulty using native gretl commands or
functions.
On Oleh's contribution: agreed, it sounds good (I haven't tried it
myself yet). But it's slightly misleading to say that "R is included
into dependencies list for building gretl" on any platform. It's an
optional thing, and it's just a matter of having the R-library
headers available if you want your gretl build to support direct
access to Rlib. Note that gretl can handle R under "foreign" even if
Rlib support is not built in (we just call the R executable in that
case.)
Allin