Re: [Gretl-users] Gretl crashed after append
On Sun, 1 Feb 2015, Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti wrote:
On Sun, 1 Feb 2015, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> [...] As things stand, the "append" command should not be allowed
> within a function. This is because for append to work correctly
> the full dataset must be "in scope", but inside a function it's
> not: only such variables as have been passed as function
> arguments are "visible".
This is possibly the most confusing aspect of Hansl for people coming from
different backgrounds. [...]
Yes, sorry about that. But as Jack goes on to say, it's a deliberate
design decision that's not going to be changed.
However, there are idiomatic ways of adding series to a dataset via
a function. One way is to use the "join" command in the function.
This adds a series as a local variable within the function; it can
then be passed to the caller as a return value. Take a look at
Jack's yahoo_get function package for some ideas.
As for the crash Thorsten got, that's now fixed in CVS and
snapshots: attempting to use "append" within a function will provoke
an error (as does "open", which has always generated an error -- but
when we banned "open" originally we overlooked the need to ban
"append").
Allin