[Gretl-users] 'store' issues

[Allin Cottrell]

On Fri, 15 Dec 2006, Sven Schreiber wrote:

> playing around with the 'store' command, I came across the 
> following (on 1.6.0 self-compiled on ubuntu edgy):
>
> * store saves data in ~, even though ~/gretl is activated in prefs

The notion is that "store" is an "expert" command: the filename 
used is exactly what you type on the command line, so if it's not 
an absolute path it goes into the present working directory.  This 
should be documented, no doubt.

> * with data from example file data2-3.gdt (annual), store saves 
> dates as literally "'1995" (including the double quotes); 
> reopening works fine, but why all these quotes, including the 
> single quote?

This may be redundant with annual data, but as I recall it's an 
attempt to avoid breakage when saving, e.g., quarterly or monthly 
data for use in a spreadsheet.  Excel will do weird and wonderful 
things with, say, "1975:01", unless a single quote is prepended to 
indicate that it's a literal string.

> * store --csv saves first column with heading "obs", although in the
> guide it says that for reading the column must have header "date" ??

"obs" and "date" are equally acceptable in this context.

> * gui importing from csv seems to presuppose .csv extension, 
> must use ascii import for csv files with different extension -- 
> is that necessary?

No, probably not.

> * 'open' seems to rely on heuristics only; why no possibility to 
> specify e.g. --csv as in store?

Because, generally speaking, gretl is smarter than most users when 
it comes to figuring out the format of imported data! ;-) But 
seriously, what useful information could you give gretl by saying 
"--csv"?  Gretl will have to check the format of the data anyway.

Allin.