I really don't like to abbreviate commands. It may make sense to you, but if other readers would see your script they will need more brain processing time to decode the meaning of the commands.

I would propose to have a "alias" command like we have in Linux, so for example you would define in the start of your scripts the needed aliases.

alias mat matrix

This could be expanded to have them all in a user file that would be included always in your scripts. This list would be actually written in the script file, for reproducibility.

Optionally, the editor could have some hiding feature of the aliases list, indicated by a tag, for example:
#aliasdefinition

The downside of this alias command would be more parsing time for a script file or commands.

What do you think?  

On Sun, Apr 11, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Sven Schreiber <svetosch@gmx.net> wrote:
Hi,

just a thought:

There was the idea that maybe (just maybe) it could make sense to
enforce clear programming by requiring to use 'matrix', 'series' etc.
instead of the generic 'genr', at least in scripts.

However, when doing that (as I do) the long keywords appearing almost
everywhere are a bit annoying. So what about introducing 'mat' as alias
for 'matrix', 'ser' for 'series', 'sca' for 'scalar', 'str' for
'string'; 'list' could stay like that I guess, or maybe to have 3-letter
conformity also introduce 'lis'.

As I said, just a thought...

cheers,
sven
_______________________________________________
Gretl-devel mailing list
Gretl-devel@lists.wfu.edu
http://lists.wfu.edu/mailman/listinfo/gretl-devel