[Developers] Robust data parser

[Arni Magnusson]

ADMB users generally don't have to worry about line endings - expecially 
when working in Linux.

Surely we can improve the robustness of the data file parser so it can 
handle a file like this, right?

ftp://glpd.fw.msu.edu/QFC/ADMB-Videos/Current_ADMB_Video_Release/ADMB%202/growth_loglike.dat

Arni



On Wed, 18 Jan 2012, Arni Magnusson wrote:

> I run into the same problem as Jacob, but only in Linux.
>
>  [Windows] the test vector is  -99 100 -101
>  [Linux]   the test vector is  0 0 0
>
> The problem seems to caused by the .dat file, which contains Dos line 
> endings. The short-term solution is to convert the line endings:
>
>  $ dos2unix growth_loglike.dat
>
> I hope the long-term solution will be to make ADMB data file parser more 
> robust. To examine the problem I changed the model to
>
> DATA_SECTION
>  init_int nobs
>  !! SHOW(nobs);
>  init_matrix vonBdata(1,nobs,1,2)
>  !! SHOW(vonBdata);
>  init_vector testvec(1,3)
>  !! SHOW(testvec);
>
> PARAMETER_SECTION
>  init_number t0
>  objective_function_value nll
>
> PROCEDURE_SECTION
>  nll = square(t0-1.0);
>
> GLOBALS_SECTION
>  #define SHOW(x) cout << #x << ": " << x << endl;
>
> It looks like the problem arises when three conditions are met:
>
>  1. Model is run in Linux
>  2. Data file has Dos line endings
>  3. Data file has empty line between two comments
>
> Thanks for reporting this problem, Jacob. You can use the 'dos2unix' shell 
> command to fix the problem for now.
>
> Arni
>
>
>
> On Wed, 18 Jan 2012, Weihai Liu wrote:
>
>> pretty sure your admb is broken, can you even run the simple.tpl which in 
>> admb examples folder? The training example is fine after changing its tpl 
>> name and the version will not be a issue for this kind testing.
>> 
>> weihai
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 11:52 AM, Jacob Kasper 
>> <jacobkasper at gmail.com>wrote:
>> 
>>> I am going through the training video and I keep getting errors with ADMB2 
>>> and onwards. I can run some tpl files but not the ones that are associated 
>>> with the training video, even when I download fore example the files here 
>>> ftp://glpd.fw.msu.edu/QFC/ADMB-Videos/Current_ADMB_Video_Release/ADMB%202/and 
>>> change the .tpl so that the names is the same as the .dat. when I run the 
>>> .tpl and then the program I get the message "the test vector is 0 0 0" 
>>> which is not what the training video suggests that it should return. I 
>>> have been over the .tpl file carefully and I cannot figure out the error, 
>>> could this be a version issue? I am running Linux 64 bit and built it from 
>>> the source distribution.
>>> 
>>> THank you
>>> 
>>> Jacob
>>> 
>> 
>