Initializing the Session

<- Previous: Basic Use
Next ->: Defining the Dataset

The first statement in the command file declares the library to be used.

    library fanpac,pgraph;
The pgraph library is not required if there will be no plotting.

The session keyword command initializes the session file and the basic global variables. The command takes two arguments, the session label, and the session title. The title is optional but the label is required. The label can't be more than 8 characters and is used for the name of the session file.

When this statement is executed,

     session amzn 'daily Amazon.com';
a file called amzn.fmt is created in the current directory. As further statements are executed, information about the data and estimated models are stored in that file. The file contains a vector generated using the GAUSS VPUT function. It's contents can be inspected through the use of the vlist and vread functions. A list of its complete contents can be found in Appendix A. See Section 3 for an introduction to using it.



R. Schoenberg
1999-03-29