Gretl Manual: Gnu Regression, Econometrics and Time-series Library
Prev | Chapter 15. The command line interface | Next

# Changes from Ramanathan's ESL

`gretlcli` inherits its basic command syntax from Ramu Ramanathan's `ESL`, and command scripts developed for `ESL` should be usable with few or no changes: the only things to watch for are multi-line commands and the `freq` command.

- In `ESL`, a semicolon is used as a terminator for many commands. I decided to remove this in `gretlcli`. Semicolons are simply ignored, apart from a few special cases where they have a definite meaning: as a separator for two lists in the `ar` and `tsls` commands, and as a marker for an unchanged starting or ending observation in the `smpl` command. In `ESL` semicolon termination gives the possibility of breaking long commands over more than one line; in `gretlcli` this is done by putting a trailing backslash `\` at the end of a line that is to be continued.

- With `freq`, you can't at present specify user-defined ranges as in `ESL`. A chi-square test for normality has been added to the output of this command.

Note also that the command-line syntax for running a batch job is simplified. For `ESL` you typed, e.g.

            esl -b datafile < inputfile > outputfile

while for `gretlcli` you type:

    	gretlcli -b inputfile > outputfile

The inputfile is treated as a program argument; it should specify a datafile to use internally, using the syntax `open datafile` or the special comment `(* !` `datafile` `*)`

Prev | Home | Next
The command line interface | Up | Data file details