pageunstack requires sorted obs_id, somewhat to my surprise

[Knoppik]

Recently I encountered a problem when using pageunstack produced a nonsensical panel_wide page

The following seems to be the case (please confirm)
- pageunstack creates an erroneous wide page if the obs_id is not sorted
- on the pageunstack help page there doesn't seem to be a hint that the obs_id should be sorted
- no error message is produced if the obs_id is not sorted
- note: there is no problem if an EViews generated dateid is used as obs_id because pagestruct sorts the page when the dateid series is created when encountering @date(series_name), there is no comparable sort by cross section ID series

Did I miss something or is this a source for quite serious errors.

Attached you find a Exel-Data and an EViews program for illustration.

panel_ss_long.xls

Simple artifical panel data.

(17 KiB) Downloaded 376 times

pageunstack_test.prg

Sample program that produces the error.

(1.24 KiB) Downloaded 377 times

[EViews Gareth]

Which version of EViews?

[Knoppik]

Apologies,
eviews 7.1 mar 9 2011 build,
Christoph

[EViews Gareth]

Yep, that looks wrong to me. We'll investigate and get it fixed.