Re: [Gretl-users] import
On Wed, 23 Sep 2009, Alan G Isaac wrote:
On 9/23/2009 2:47 PM, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> One could fairly easily write a shell
> command to preprocess the data and execute it via "!<shell>"
> in gretl.
Sure, but I'm trying to help students get IFS data into gretl.
They have been generally encouraged to use CSV files, so I'm
trying to give them gretl-based instructions for getting IFS
produced CSV files into gretl.
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).
For example, if you want to discard the first 6 lines of a data
file, data.csv, on Windows, in gretl script/console:
! more +6 data.csv > gretldata.csv
open gretldata.csv
There's little point in trying to have gretl reinvent shell
processing. (With spreadsheet files, which are not plain text and
hence cannot easily be manipulated via the shell, we try to be
accommodating.)
Allin Cottrell