Re: [Gretl-devel] Regarding long variable names
On Mon, 29 Oct 2007, andreas.rosenblad(a)ltv.se wrote:
Would it be terribly difficult to let gretl allow longer variable
lengths?
For example, function names are allowed to have 31 characters. Couldn't
variable names also be allowed to have 31 characters?
In theory, it would be easy-peasy. If you can build from the source, all
you need to do is edit line 78 in lib/src/libgretl.h and change the
definition of VNAMELEN from 16 to whatever you like. In practice, it's
hard to figure out the number of places in the code in which we used the
number 16 instead of "VNAMELEN" (or worse, 15 instead of
"VNAMELEN-1").
The check is doable, but it's time-consuming, boring and error-prone[*].
Since this change may trigger all sorts of unintended consequences it
would be IMHO very unwise to risk introducing some subtle bug just because
of this.
That said, I'm personally in favour of longer identifiers, but not for the
next release.
[*] However, it would be a perfect task for someone who wants to get
involved in development, but can't code in C, since in most cases it
should be quite simple to figure out if the "16" is supposed to be the
length of a variable name or something else.
Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Economia
Università Politecnica delle Marche
r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it
http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti