[Gretl-devel] members of lists returned from functions

[Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti]

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008, Allin Cottrell wrote:

> For now I have it that list-returning user functions just
> overwrite, but perhaps we need to discuss this some more.

I'm personally in favour of the overwrite policy. The logs command 
generates variables with the prefix "l_" plus the original name. This is 
consistent, logical and predictable. Imagine this scenario: you have a 
huge dataset with hundreds of variables, you take logs _en masse_ via the 
nice and convenient "logs" command, only to find, dozens of lines later, 
that what you thought was under the name "l_varname34" doesn't contain 
what you want, because it's under "l_varname34a". Very irritating, and 
hellish to debug. The only good thing that may come out of this situation 
is the invention, if you're creative, of swearwords previously unknown to 
man.

Riccardo (Jack) Lucchetti
Dipartimento di Economia
Università Politecnica delle Marche

r.lucchetti at univpm.it
http://www.econ.univpm.it/lucchetti