Hi all, since release is near, I feel it may be a good time to propose a backward-incompatible change that IMHO sooner or later we'll have to make: originally, we had "|" and "&" for logical operations. Then, when matrices appeared, we used the same operators for concatenation (mostly, because that's what everybody else uses). At the same time, we also support "||" and "&&" for logical operators. This, I think, creates an ugly ambiguity which should be resolved by specialising "|"-"~" for concatenation and "||"-"&&" for logical operations.

Datum: Tue, 27 May 2008 17:06:28 -0400 (EDT) Von: Allin Cottrell <cottrell(a)wfu.edu&gt; An: r.lucchetti(a)univpm.it, Gretl development <gretl-devel(a)lists.wfu.edu&gt; Betreff: Re: [Gretl-devel] Proposal for a syntax change

On Tue, 27 May 2008, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti wrote: > since release is near, I feel it may be a good time to propose a > backward-incompatible change that IMHO sooner or later we'll > have to make... Since we already have some backward-incompatible changes this time, I'm inclined to agree the time is right for OR: "|" -> "||" AND: "&" -> "&&" If we do this I'll make an effort to provide what Sven very reasonably requested some time back, namely good error messages in case "|" or "&" seem to be used in their old sense, with a "redirect" to the currently accepted syntax, e.g. for AND, please use "&&"

Me, agreeing with Jack: >> Since we already have some backward-incompatible changes this >> time, I'm inclined to agree the time is right for >> >> OR: "|" -> "||" >> AND: "&" -> "&&" >> >> If we do this I'll make an effort to provide what Sven very >> reasonably requested some time back, namely good error >> messages... Sven: > I believe that what I suggested was to have a warning period > before the change is actually introduced. In this case it would > mean to get the warnings into 1.7.5, and then some months later > (1.7.6?) make the actual syntax change. In general that is good procedure, I agree. On the other hand, in this case the "||" and "&&" forms for OR and AND (and only those) have been in the manual for over a year, and none of the sample scripts packaged with gretl use the old forms.