2009/9/23 Alan G Isaac <alan.isaac@gmail.com>

I'd like to import data from a CSV file.
I'd like to do this in a script.
In addition to being able to specify the date
range,I need the following functionality:

skiplines: the number of lines to skip at the
beginning of the file
usecols: which columns to use for data
varnames: specify names (which are not in the CSV file)

Possible?

Finally, if specifying the date range is not possible,
is it possible to reset the dataset structure at the
command line (rather than via menus)?

I'm not sure about CSV files, but Gretl can open spreadsheet files (Gnumeric, Open Document and Excel) and plain text in the way you want. Look at page 39 in the Gretl Command Reference. Example:

open "C:\yourdata.xls" --sheet=3 --rowoffset=1 coloffset=1

Tell me if it doesn't work, ok?

Best regards,