I am very new to GRETL so all help is greatly appreciated.

Previously I have asked about making an ODBC connection to MS Access to bring in my own data.  With the help of users in this community I have been successful in that end ever.

Below is the code that I used:

nulldata 250

setobs 12 1990:1

open dsn=FCST_INPUTS --odbc

string sqlstr="SELECT Emplopy FROM Data_Table_to_GRETL WHERE census_division="East North Central"

data Employ @sqlstr --odbc

setinfo MWh -n "in MWh"

Now I have a simple string concatenation question to be used in a SQL statement.

I need to bring in two (2) data series from the same MS Access table named Data_Table_to_GRETL.  The two series are: (1) Employ; and (2) Pop

Both of data series need to be from the same census_division (in the Acess database I have data by year month for each of the 9 US census divisions).  In this example the census division is “East North Central”.

I though that I could define a string named census_divicsion early in the code and then concatenate the sqlstr for each “ODBC read” as follows:

string census_division="East North Central"

nulldata 250

setobs 12 1990:1

# bring in Employment data

open dsn=FCST_INPUTS --odbc

string sqlstr="SELECT Employ FROM Data_Table_to_GRETL WHERE census_division=" ~ census_division

data Employ @sqlstr --odbc

# bring in Population data

open dsn=FCST_INPUTS –odbc

string sqlstr2="SELECT Pop FROM Data_Table_to_GRETL WHERE census_division="~ census_division

data Pop sqlstr2 --odbc

However, for some reason even thought the string appears to be correct, it errors out:

Error executing script: halting

>data Employ @sqlstr –odbc

Any assistance providing the correct logic for concatenating the sqlstr that would make it able to be read in SQL would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Mike