On Jueves, 3 de Septiembre de 2009 03:11:34 Allin Cottrell escribió: > On Wed, 2 Sep 2009, Allin Cottrell wrote: > > On Wed, 2 Sep 2009, chris wrote: > > > Allin Cottrell wrote: > > > > However, I'm not sure offhand whether gretl's ODBC routines will > > > > handle this sort of input correctly. I'll have to test. > > > > > > Did you change the string parsing code? Because with current windows > > > snapshot the follwing snippet no longer works: > > > > > > <script> > > > string a="\" > > > </script> > > > > Yes, I considered that I had found a bug, in that you couldn't set > > a string to contain literal quotes by doing, e.g. > > > > string quotefoo = "\"foo\"" > > > > That's now fixed, but it has broken the idiom you mentioned. But > > I think that would be better done as > > > > string a = "\\" > > > > This doesn't yet work right, but it will soon. > > Sorry, let me not prejudge the issue. One option is to proceed in > the direction I indicated, allowing backslash-escaped quotes (and > so, therefore, other escapes, including backslash-escaped > backslashes) in the definition of string literals using > > string s = "..." > > But another option is simply to revert the change I made, to which > Chris has drawn attention. > > To clarify: before my recent change, when you defined a string > literal using > > string s = "..." > > gretl followed the simple procedure of making the string start > at the first '"' and end at the next '"'. So Chris's > > string a = "\" > > would produce a string containing a single, literal backslash. > This means that if you did > > string quotefoo = "\"foo\"" > > (in the hope of getting a quote-wrapped string) you'd get an > error, since gretl would see a string comprising a single > backslash followed by the bare identifier 'foo', and most likely > you'd get a complaint about the symbol 'foo' being undefined. > > It seemed to me that this was a bug, but maybe it's OK: it > doesn't agree with C usage, but it was consistent. And if you > wanted to get fancier with escapes you could use sprintf. > > Any thoughts? Should we just go back to the status quo ante? > (And perhaps add a note to the manual.) > > Allin. > _______________________________________________ > Gretl-users mailing list > Gretl-users(a)lists.wfu.edu > http://lists.wfu.edu/mailman/listinfo/gretl-users
In general, I don`t have any strong preference for any of the two alternatives, if the subject is well documented in the manual. But I have many script files in which I use the backslash in a string, so it is probably that if the behavior of the "string" command is changed I will have to correct them. Apart from that, I see the "string" command as something more simple to use for a not very experimented user, and "sprintf" as a command more flexible and so more difflcult. With the old status of the "string" command, when this user has an error with a command similar to string quotefoo = "\"foo\"" I think it is time he/she learn how to use "sprintf". I mean: please go back to the state before. -- Ignacio Diaz-Emparanza DEPARTAMENTO DE ECONOMÍA APLICADA III (ECONOMETRÍA Y ESTADÍSTICA) UPV/EHU Avda. Lehendakari Aguirre, 83 | 48015 BILBAO T.: +34 946013732 | F.: +34 946013754 www.et.bs.ehu.es
