Ox 2.10: new features and fixes

New features and enhancements

• Created iseq(). Now can use isfeq() for case-insensitive string comparison. Also created strifind() as case-insensitive version of strfind().
• "aa"+"bb" is now the same as "aa"~"bb"
• Allowing k x T input for: DrawCorrelogram(), DrawBoxPlot(), DrawSpectrum(), DrawQQ(), DrawDensity() Also created 2 argument Draw() function.
• created:
  Database::Load,
  Sample::GetFrequency, and
  Database::RemoveObsIf,
  
• Modelbase class
• Read Stata 4-6 .dta files (loadmat, Database::LoadDta)
• The comma in a matrix constant to seperate elements within a row was made optional in Ox 2.00. However, this could lead to to errors which are difficult to find, and has been made compulsary again.
• Other new and enhanced functions:
  • cerf() (Complex error function)
  • erf() (Error function)
  • randirichlet(),
  • ranwishart()
  • today() to get current time/date as double (no of secs since 1970).
    timing(mtimes,1) to go from doubles to year,month,...
  • NumJacobian(): Now using vec in the returned function value, so can be used for matrix-valued functions.
• assignment of array to part of array (i.e. using selection on right-hand side) now uses array contents of rhs. Previously, when both as1 and as 2 are arrays (of strings e.g.) as1[0:1] = as2 was executed as as1[0] = as2, as1[1] = as2; thus going up one array level in as1[0] and as1[1]. Now it is executed as: as1[0] = as2[0], as1[1] = as2[1]; thus preserving the array level in as1.

Known problems in version 2.00a which are fixed in version 2.10:

• assignment using one index on the left-hand side doesn't works as expected when the lhs is indexed as row (or column) and the right-hand side is a column (or row). For example: decl vp = <1;2;3;4>; vp[0:1] = <-1,-2>; // WRONG! vp[0:1] = <-1;-2>; // OK The first should set vp to -1;-2;3;4, but only did -1;2;3;4.
• OxRun: GiveWin keeps grabbing focus when a new window is specified. Now this is only happening the first time; the window is brought to the foreground within GiveWin after SetTextWindow/SetDrawWindow, but GiveWin grabs focus only first time.
• <0.1;0.7;> would lead to an infite loop of error messages. Now the trailing semicolon or colon is allowed.
• Error in PcFimlDgp.ox prevented use of more than one lag.
• Small improvement to XLS reading. Also fixed problem with large negative numbers (which were mapped to an integer by Excel).
• In rare occasions concatenation with a NULL string would lead to a crash.
• Database::Remove() did not remove the variable name.
• invertgen(x, 0) is wrong if x is not square.
• Bug in NumJacobian(): dimensions of returned matrix are wrong.
• Problem with scanning from a string: sscan(&s, ...) doesn't advance string correctly, resulting in a crash. sscan(s, ...) only works for first scanned element (again, the string location is not moved forward before reading the second element). As a consequence, the example on page 187 will not work.
• sortbyc() when sorting by multiple columns is likely to go wrong. The only version which works is when the sort column indices are of the form: 0,1,2,... (i.e. starting at 0, and consecutive range).

Known problems in version 2.00 which were fixed in version 2.00a:

• There is a problem with using [] directly on the return value of a function when the function returns an array. Also when a function returns part of an array which resides in a local variable. For example: func1() { return {"a", "b"}; } print(func1()[1]); func2() { decl x = {"a", "b"}; return x[0:1]; } print(func2()); In the first case x=func1() is fine. In the second case, assigning x[0:1] to a local variable which is then returned works without problems.
• Saving as in7: base name with more than 12 chars causes problems (when trying to derive default project name) and could result in a crash. Can be avoided by using a base name (ie. file name without path and extension) with fewer than 13 characters.
• a[0][x] * b[x][1] crashes, but only when the first dimension of a is 0 and the second dimension of b is 1.
• Problem with reassigning different zero sized matrix. For example: decl x = zeros(0,5); println(rows(x), " x ", columns(x)); x = zeros(0,6); println(rows(x), " x ", columns(x)); prints: 0 x 5 0 x 5 but should be 0 x 5 0 x 6