Thank you for your answers. I need to join 2 files and the Key-matching is NUMBER variable that is included in both files. Not all observations from left-hand/inner  will match with the ones from right-hand/outer. My commands were:
 "open /Users/andreea/Desktop/Test1Gretl.csv __quiet
join /Users/andreea/Desktop/Test2Gretl.csv CONTRTYPE __ikey=NUMBER
print __byobs"

Thank you again for your help.


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 6:34 PM, Allin Cottrell <cottrell@wfu.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 2 Aug 2013, Andreea Bolos wrote:

> I followed the instructions from the manual but I always get "First char of
> varname is bad (first must be alphabetical)". The names of my variables are
> constructed according to gretl.Do you have any suggestion of what can be
> the problem?

That particular error message is probably spurious (and has
been fixed in CVS), but it likely does indicate a syntax error
in the invocation of "join". I would recommend trying the
current snapshot (for Windows or Mac) or a build from CVS. Or
if you send your join command to the list maybe we can see
what's wrong.

Allin Cottrell
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