Bug in @elem?

[startz]

Is this a bug in @elem, or just a misunderstanding on my part.

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series studentToShow = @ceiling(@obsrange*rnd) scalar student = @elem(studentToShow,1)

I get the error message

Capture.PNG (15.73 KiB) Viewed 5492 times

This is running in an undated workfile.

For what it's worth, all I really want to do is to randomly select one observation from an alpha series in the next step. Maybe there's a better way to do it?

[EViews Gareth]

Not a bug. @elem requires that the second argument be in quotes.

Of course a better way would just be:

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scalar student = @floor(@runif(1,@obsrange))

[startz]

(a) Thank you.
(b) You're right.
(c) It's not my fault. The documentation reads

@elem takes two arguments: the first argument is the name of the series, and the second is the date or observation identifier.

For example, suppose that you want to use the 1980Q3 value of the quarterly series Y, or observation 323 of the undated series X. Then the functions:

@elem(y, 1980Q3)

@elem(x, 323)

will return the values of the respective series in the respective periods.

[EViews Gareth]

Yep, I've noticed that before.

[startz]

Also, are you sure about @floor rather than @ceiling? Or put better, if I want the closed interval [1,@obsrange] do I need

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@floor(@runif(1,@obsrange+1))

?

[EViews Gareth]

As soon as I posted the code, I thought to myself I wonder if I should change it to add the +1, or should I wait and see if he notices it.