[Gretl-users] ODS importer

[Allin Cottrell]

On Thu, 8 Nov 2007, John C Frain wrote:

> Thanks for so quick a solution.  I have tried and can confirm that the
> ods importer now respects the dates in the ods file.  I think that
> what you are doing is probably what most people will want.  In
> Rmetrics it is possible to strip the NAs from a daily series (all 5
> days per week) and retain what you are proposing. It is also possible
> to add back in the na's to the reduced series to recover the original
> 5-day per week series with missing values.  I have used this facility
> to then interpolate for the missing values.

I've been thinking about something along those lines. More on that 
later.

> I have also had a look at adding data cells containing =NA() (or 
> #N/A) opposite the holiday dates in the ods file.  These are 
> imported into gretl as 0.

Ah, that's because such cells contain the numeric value 0 
internally -- but the text "#N/A" is also stored internally, so we 
ought to recognize that.  Fixed in CVS.

> If I replace the =NA() by any string such as NA then that is 
> also imported as 0.

Gretl should now recognize the strings

NA, N.A, n.a, N/A, NaN, . and ..

as missing values.

> If I just enter the date in the first 
> column and leave the data entries blank they appear as blank in 
> gretl's | data | display values | and I presume are then treated 
> as missing by gretl.

Yes, that's right.

Allin.