[Gretl-users] comma as decimal separator: clarification

I've just clarified this in my own mind, so I'll make a brief posting here, and try to add something along these lines in the manual soon. 1. In computing the value returned by a "genr" formula, by design gretl forces all numeric strings into the "C" numeric locale, where '.' is the decimal separator, for internal manipulation. However, this was not done with full consistency, with the results that Sven noted. I think this is now consistent. 2. As part of the "pre-processing" of a genr string, two things are done: (a) all spaces are squeezed out; and (b) if the current locale has ',' as decimal deparator, all commas that appear between two digits are replaced by '.'s. For the most part this works OK. For example (user input on the left, processed version on the right): genr x = 0,5 -> genr x=0.5 genr x = 0,25 * 0,3 -> genr x=0.25*0.3 3. But the case Sven noted did not work: genr x = pvalue(X, 3, 5.67) -> genr x = pvalue(X,3.5.67) The pre-processed string contains a syntax error. 4. I've now modified the space-squeezing routine: a space that immediately follows a comma is not removed. Thus, when the rule "replace commas between digits with '.'" is applied, it should not break things like these pvalue arguments: genr x = pvalue(X, 3, 5.67) -> genr x=pvalue(X, 3, 5.67) genr x = pvalue(X, 3, 5,67) -> genr x=pvalue(X, 3, 5.67) 5. So this should be the situation: (a) Regardless of locale, you should be able to use '.' as decimal separator in genr formulae; (b) if you use ',' as decimal separator this should be OK too, with the qualification that you have to make sure to leave a space after an argument-separating comma in the case of numeric arguments, as in the pvalue function. If anyone spots any remaining problems in this area, please let me know. Allin Cottrell