Dear Gretl Team,

As a part of my job in function package maintenance, I'm trying to make a Hansl script to (1) create a list of functions available in the Gretl internet server, (2) download them using the new "install" command and, (3) execute the examples.

I really appreciate your help to build a list with the names of the functions. I'm using the following code to retrieve the names:

<hansl>

string functions_page = readfile("http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/gretl/cgi-bin/gretldata.cgi?opt=SHOW_FUNCS")

string line = ""

scalar i = 1

loop while getline(functions_page, line) --quiet

string line_name = sprintf("line_%d", i++)

string @line_name = strstr(line, "current_fnfiles/")

string @line_name = strstr(@line_name, "<tt>")

string @line_name = strsub(@line_name, "</td><td>", " ")

string @line_name = strsub(@line_name, "</a>", "")

string @line_name = strsub(@line_name, "</td></tr>", "")

string @line_name = strsub(@line_name, "<p>", "'")

string @line_name = strsub(@line_name, "<tt>", "'")

string @line_name = strsub(@line_name, "</tt>", "'")

string @line_name = strsub(@line_name, "</p>", "'")

string @line_name = strstrip(@line_name)

if @line_name = ""

delete @line_name

else

print @line_name

endif

endloop

</hansl>

It gives me something like this:

(...)

'addlist.gfn' 'Allin Cottrell' '1.2' '2010-12-17' 'Sequential addition of variables to a model'

(...)

Now I need to use just the first piece of the string ("addlist") to combine it with the install command. Something like this:

<hansl>

install addlist.gfn

</hansl>

Now my question: How could I extract the first "element" of my string?

Best regards / Um abraço,

Henrique Andrade