Re: data_out return status

[John Darrington]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 09:43:21PM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
     John Darrington <address@hidden> writes:
     
     > Any objections if I change the return type of data_out from void to
     > bool, to indicate success/failure ?
     
     By just adding `return ok;' to the end, you mean?
     Fine by me.

That's what I had in mind, yes.

But I've got another proposal now:

The gui has an implicit feature where a user (in the variable sheet)
changes the type and/or format of a variable which is already
populated (has cases in the data sheet).

I've been stuffing around with ways of doing this in the gui, but on
reflection, none of them are going to be satisfactory.  Essentially,
if a variable's type changes (eg from string to numeric or numeric to
date) then what we have is a transformation, although the user might
not think of it as such.

Can we therefore add a transformation in the pspp code which converts
variables between arbitrary types/formats ?  It should do this by
applying data_out ; data_in.  If either of them fail, then it sets the
value to SYSMIS (or "" if the target type is string).

J'


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