Existence testing

[bhaupt]

For a lot of the programs I write, it would be beneficial to check to see if a Page or a Series (or really any object) already exists in my workfile. Instead I often find myself coding a much larger repetitive code section instead of being able to loop through a concise code template. I've scoured to look for an exists() test. I've finally set to write one. My concerns stem from interrupting the routine (via 'ESC') while in mid subroutine. If I interrupt at the wrong time, effectively I've allowed for an increase in errors which I might not catch.

Here's the other thing, if I try to call an error catching function on a series which does not exist, it should punt when the function call fails at the series declaration, effectively erroring on the error check.

This has *not* been tested since I'm still making sure that I've got the concept thought through well enough.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Code: Select all

' Using @errorcount and @maxerrs: get the current conditions and settings ' attempt to perform a null operation and confirm @errcount has not incremented ' return 1 if exists, return 0 if not subroutine local exist(series passed_series, scalar ret_val) %beg_err_ct = @errorcount %max_err_ct = @maxerrs %end_err_ct = @errorcount setmaxerrs = %max_err_ct + 1 genr temp_series = passed_series ret_val = 0 if %end_err_ct = %beg_err_ct then ' the set existed ret_val = 1 setmaxerrs = %max_err_ct -1 else 'the set did not exist. seterrcount = @errorcount - 1 setmaxerrs = %max_err_ct -1 endif endsub

[EViews Gareth]

Nice idea, but using the @isobject function and %type data member is probably easier.

[startz]

Have you looked at @isobject()?

[bhaupt]

@isobject is exactly what I needed. It should clean up a few programs rather nicely.

[svilen]

I would like to test if several series exist i.g. I know that the names of the series begin with "a_" or ends with "_0".
Something like this:

%check = "a_*"
@isobject(%check) -> "0" if there is no result, "1" if at least one exists

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[EViews Gareth]

Use the @wlookup command. It will retrieve a list of all objects that match a criteria.

[Jiri]

Dear Gareth,

When using @isobject for testing for an existence of an equation in the workfile, Eviews tells me, that equation is invalid string argument. I cannot find any way how to change equation name into string. Please, could you help me, how to test if an equation exists?

I have, say, max 130 equations named eq1 eq2 … eq130, but some equations are missing (say eq7…). I need to store coefficients from these equations into a matrix using the program below. As the program stops at missing eq7, I tried to add the if condition, which is not working, unfortunately.

Thank you,
Jiri

matrix(130,12) coefs

for !i=1 to 130

if @isobject(eq{!i}) then

for !j=1 to eq{!i}.@ncoefs
coefs(!i,!j) = eq{!i}.@coef(!j)

endif

next
next

[EViews Gareth]

Code: Select all

%name = "eq" + @str(!i) if @isobject(%name) then