[Gretl-devel] gretl's trouble of distinguishing an array (of matrices) from its elements

Hi, further trying to use arrays, it seems that gretl sometimes is confused about the '+=' operator: <hansl> matrices mc mc += ones(3,2) # += refers to whole array mc[1] += ones(3,2) # += should refer to 1st array element </hansl> The last line gives a "datatype mismatch" error or something like that. Apparently gretl sees that 'mc' is an array, then sees '+=' and thinks this wants to append another array to mc, but on the RHS there is only a single matrix. In reality of course on the LHS there is also just a matrix which lives inside mc. (The long form "mc[1] = mc[1] + ..." works.) Somewhat related perhaps, it is currently impossible to write something like: "matrix mc[1] = ones(3,2)" because gretl complains that "variable mc is of type array, not acceptable here". Not a big deal per se, but having to write "matrices" instead feels awkward, since the operation really is just about one element, not about the whole array. I guess there is a logical connection to my complaint from a couple of days back about a matrix inside a bundle (like mybundle.mymatrix) not being 100% usable in hansl code as a standard matrix syntactically. Allin answered that filling this gap would not be trivial. Here the problem is about a matrix inside an array. I can imagine this is not trivial, either. But somehow these limitations are starting to feel restrictive. thanks, sven