[Gretl-devel] dotdir (was Belated response to Sven on function packages)

[Sven Schreiber]

[More answers to your concrete proposal in another email right after
this one.]

Allin Cottrell schrieb:

> (3) in a shell command line ("!" or "launch")

> 
> The effect in case (3) can be controlled by
> 
>   set shelldir /some/path

This "set shelldir" thing is very interesting, but it seems
undocumented!? I will think about whether it can be used to solve the
temp file location issue for py4gretl.

> * In the console/script context, should we pay any attention to 
> the GUI configuration choice of using the @userdir or the CWD as 
> the default for saving files?  In the GUI context, this determines 
> the location in the filesystem at which the File, Save dialog 
> points initially.  This could be read over into the console/script 
> situation, or not.

Yes I think that would be useful and intuitive, just like the other
settings there are also honored by console/script gretl.

> 
> * Related to the above, should we make a distinction between the 
> filenames "foo" and "./foo" for opening a file for writing in the 
> console/script setting?  

Yes, please. I think we actually discussed part of this issue some time
ago when I requested a change of the store/outfile behavior and you were
so kind to do it. The "only" remaining issue is the rule for "./".

The shell itself makes no such
> distinction (well, it does in the case of calling executables, but 
> that's not what we're talking about here).

I don't understand this, can you explain?

> 
> * As for setting shelldir as CWD on startup, what about (most?) 
> GUI users who don't even know what that directory is?  From their 
> point of view we'd be better to let shelldir default to @userdir 
> -- or should we just assume that such users will never have 
> occasion to write such files anyway, so we can ignore them?

Yes I think we can, I don't see how anybody would be affected by
changing shelldir from an empty string to something else.

> 
> One point seems clear: packaged functions should never use "./" 
> filenames (or relative paths at all) unless they're very sure 
> what's implied (i.e. unless they have set shelldir or the 
> equivalent).  Packages should not assume that the startup CWD 
> means anything, or is writable by the user.

Well py4gretl uses "./"! :-) Not because it's clean, but because
otherwise one would have to tell the user how to set her preferences for
file saving locations. At least that's what I thought, I realize there
are still things I don't know about gretl scripting. Maybe the shelldir
thing in combination with the @userdir variable makes it unnecessary, I
will think about it.

Thanks for reading,
-sven