Ox 5: new features and fixes

Fixed problems in version 5.1
New features and enhancements in version 5.0
Fixed problems in version 5.0

Fixed problems in version 5.1

OxPack cannot run modelling package that depends on files outside the implied package folder: need option to specify additional run options. Redesigned the Add/Remove Package dialog.
Ability to read csv file written by Excel on Mac. Save csv file: no more warning about maximum rows/columns. The loadmat/savemat documentation now mentions csv (the wks/wk1 formats are now deprecated).
Warning: Excel may write csv files with only single precision (9 significant digits, rather than the 17 that are needed for loss-less saving).
DrawTMatrix and daily data: sub sample plotting picked an upper bound for the x-axis that was too low when using annual major ticks. Now also extending axis one day further, to include the next major tick mark on the axis.
Fixed memory leak in choleski of large matrices
DrawBoxPlot: third argument was not interpreted as variable name but as line index.
Modelbase::Grow creates wrong Seasonal/CSeasonal for weekly data.
Couldn't use GetModelStatus() in PcFiml derived classes.
Examples (html): title had link back, but now also added definition at end of example to jump to definition.
Companion() (in lib/longrun.ox) would give run-time error for static model.
Found solution for annoying Internet Explorer ActiveX warning with Ox html files
bin64/oxl.exe was not statically linked
Fixed crash in loadmat of non-existent .xls file
Increased precision of today function (Windows,Linux); timer under Linux now returns wallclock instead of CPU time (as in Windows).

New features and enhancements in version 5.0

Multithreaded version (Ox Professional only) New command line option -rp to specify number of parallel threads. The default is to use the same as the number of cores/processors. Use -rp1 to force running on just one (serial instead of parallel).
Can now have enum inside class declaration (behaving as static const decl member variables).
Can now declare the same class twice (e.g. by accidentally including a header file twice, provided the declarations are identical)
Modelbase::ForceYlag changed all types to Y_VAR for lagged Y variables. Now argument can be array of two values to specify which type to change (first is value to change to, second to change from). Modelbase::ReceiveModel() now only changes X_VAR to Y_VAR for lagged dep.vars using ForceYlag( {Y_VAR, X_VAR} );
ismember and classname functions.
improved invertgen documentation.
Database::Grow and Modelbase::Grow now accept a negative argument to add observations at the beginning. Improved the created dates when extending a dated (weekly or 5 days per week) database.
Database::Remove and Database::Rename now accept arrays of strings as arguments.
dropr and insertr now also work on arrays.
getfiles function
OxPack:
- Added "OxPackGetData"("DbFullPath")
- Can now specify multiple extensions in OP_FILE_OPEN, e.g. "OxPackSpecialDialog"("OP_FILE_OPEN", 0, "*.in7;*.xls"
- Added OP_VARIABLE (OxPackSpecialDialog) and CTL_VARIABLE (dialog control). This allows editing any Ox variable, including arrays and objects of classes. The type of components cannot be changed.
Now can take the reference (address) of const variables (previously this would be a compile-time error). This allows using fscan("%v", &this) to read an object from disk. Also allowed is &this in OP_VARIABLE or CTL_VARIABLE.
Faster sorting functions
exclusion function with 3 arguments now sets idx to <> if the input is empty
improvements for quanbeta and quanf, probf, tailf now allows n,m>0 instead of n,m>1.

Fixed problems in version 5.0:

"%v" format: don't read/write static const members.
public static data members were not directly accessible.
In Ox 4 ranseed returns the 256 seeds. However, the generator has an additional state and carry integer, so this is not enough to get the exact state of the generator. Now ranseed will return 258 numbers: the 256 seeds followed by state and carry. This allows for the exact state to be replicated (defaults are used for seeds, state or carry that are missing).
raninvgaussian could generate negative draws for very large mu, e.g. raninvgaussian(1,1,1e10,0.53). This was a problem with the original algorithm (Michael et al. 1976).
Parser recognizes << and >>, however they could cause stack overflow (and subsequent crash). Now solved stack problem. Currently, it is a no-op: doesn't do anything.
The following code prints instead of
modelforc crashed after error message: Some lagged variables are not given at lag 0. Now better at taking zero coefficients in account.
gammafact(.NaN) results in crash (infinite recursion) on Linux.
The spline function with specified X and missing value(s) would crash. To fix this, the return value of the spline function when an X variable is specified is different: previously it was the sorted smooth values. Now the values are in the original position (i.e. corresponding to the input Y data).
Spline against time was unaffected and is unchanged.
OxPack:
- SaveOptions did not get called when closing OxMetrics.
- CTL_LABEL should not affect the column partitioning.
DrawTMatrix with dates for X axis did not work in Ox Console (but worked with OxMetrics).

This file last changed .