Hi all, I've stumbled over this weird thing trying to retrieve the day of Easter Sunday applying the easterday() function as shown in the help text. However, it seems that scalar "d" is not a proper integer as trying to restrict the sample to a single day fails with the error message "No observations would be left!". Replacing "d" in the "smpl" command by 5

scalar e = easterday(2015) scalar m = floor(e) scalar d = 100*(e-m) print e m d

I've stumbled over this weird thing trying to retrieve the day of Easter Sunday applying the easterday() function as shown in the help text. However, it seems that scalar "d" is not a proper integer as trying to restrict the sample to a single day fails with the error message "No observations would be left!". Replacing "d" in the "smpl" command by 5 works though. This is using latest git on Ubuntu 19.10. <hansl> clear set verbose off nulldata 200 setobs 7 2015-01-01 --time-series series year, month, day isoconv($obsdate, &year, &month, &day) scalar e = easterday(2015) scalar m = floor(e) scalar d = 100*(e-m)

Am 08.05.20 um 14:30 schrieb Allin Cottrell: > On Fri, 8 May 2020, Artur Tarassow wrote: > >> I've stumbled over this weird thing trying to retrieve the day of Easter >> Sunday applying the easterday() function as shown in the help text. >> >> However, it seems that scalar "d" is not a proper integer as trying to >> restrict the sample to a single day fails with the error message "No >> observations would be left!". Replacing "d" in the "smpl" command by 5 >> works though. This is using latest git on Ubuntu 19.10. >> >> <hansl> >> clear >> set verbose off >> nulldata 200 >> setobs 7 2015-01-01 --time-series >> >> series year, month, day >> isoconv($obsdate, &year, &month, &day) >> >> scalar e = easterday(2015) >> scalar m = floor(e) >> scalar d = 100*(e-m) > [...] > > Adding at this point > >   printf "4.05 = %.15f\n", 4.05 >   printf "d = %.15f\n", d >   eval d == 5 > > reveals > >   4.05 = 4.050000000000001 >   d = 4.999999999999983 >   0 > > So round() will take d to 5, but not floor(). Hansl doesn't do integer > arithmetic -- and couldn't in this case anyway since e = 4.05, coding for > the 5th of April. > > It seems to me easterday() would be better returning a 2-vector holding > month and day. As things stand you have to use round() on the day, or take > this approach: > > edate = sprintf("%.2f", easterday(2015)) > scalar m, d > sscanf(edate, "%d.%d", m, d) > eval d == 5 # gives 1 Thanks for your alternative approach, Allin. Do you think your suggestion is more reliable compared to the application of round() in this case, or are there some edge-cases where round() may fail here? I've tried round() here for a several years and it seems to work properly.