Re: [Gretl-users] import
On 9/23/2009 8:21 PM, Allin Cottrell wrote:
Gretl-based instructions are not necessarily exclusive of shell
commands, since (a) gretl can do shell, and (b) the shell is
capable of more flexible manipulation of text files than gretl can
ever be (more so on *nix than Windows, of course, but even on
Windows).
Hi Allin,
So I am unsure how much you want to hear about this, but I will respond
once.
It is really infeasible to introduce my undergrads to shell commands.
They are already shell shocked by my insistence that they write gretl
scripts.
Most of them have no idea what a shell is. And the shell is not cross
platform.
The cross-platform character of gretl is crucial to my choosing it.
I would have to communicate to them that "Mac users do it this way,
and Win users do it that way". This is just not going to go down well.
That's the reality I face.
There is also a different kind of argument. Sure CSV files are plain
text and
can therefore be easily manipulated by a variety of tools. But they are
also
a core spreadsheet format. Thus the --rowoffset and --coloffset options
of `open` should work with CSV too. Or so I claim, despite offering no
code to do this.
I'll shut up now.
Alan
PS It might interest you to know that my current class is split about
half/half
Mac/Windows, and that a fair number of the Windows users are using OO.
Just fyi. This is quite different than past years.