Analytica 4.3 beta Release Notes/Changes in 4.3.0.22

This page lists changes in build 4.3.0.22 since build 4.3.0.19

Dates and Times

As described in What's new in Analytica 4.3?, date/time numbers are distinguished in Analytica 4.3 from real-value numbers. This allows both to be displayed in the same table using different formats (e.g., date format for dates, Suffix format for numbers). Several adjustments in this build, listed below, are focused on making the number format settings more intuitive.

  • The Number Format Dialog has several refinements.
    • Selecting Date (and adjusting the date settings) does not cause numbers in the view to be displayed as dates. Only date/time values are impacted by those changes.
    • Instead, there is a new checkbox, Display numbers as dates, which is unchecked by default. You have to check this checkbox for real-numbers to be displayed as dates.
    • When you've selected Date (and not checked Display numbers as dates), the format used for numbers is distinguished in an italics font.
    • When you bring up the Number Format dialog, it will open with Date selected if your table contains all dates, or if a selected region starts with a date.
  • When you enter something that can be interpreted (in full) as a date, time, or date and time, it will be parsed as a date/time number. Formerly this behavior only occurred when the number format was set to Date. Thus, if you enter:
2-10-2011
into a definition, it will be parsed as 20-Feb-2011 (or with non-US regional settings, as 2-Oct-2011) rather than as two consecutive subtractions. In contrast, the definition:
(2-10-2011)
which includes parentheses is interpreted as the subtraction expression that evaluates to -2019. If you really want to suppress this "parse as date if possible" functionality, then check Display dates as numbers in the number format dialog.
Note: You might consider setting Display dates as numbers on extremely long edit table that receive OLE-linked data or pasted data from an external source. The algorithm for testing whether the cell can be interpreted as a date does take some time, so if you are linking in million-cell tables, turning this setting off can speed up the parsing slightly.
  • SpreadsheetRange and SpreadsheetCell read in date-valued cells as date-numbers in Analytica, and also adjust the value to match the actual date origin settings being used by both Excel and Analytica. Thus, dates and time read in correctly even if you haven't set the Use Excel Date Origin preference setting, or if you've changed the Excel-side preference to use the standard Analytica 1904 date-origin.
  • SpreadsheetSetRange and SpreadsheetSetCell write date-values to Excel as date cells, again adjusting for the date origins used by both Analytica and Excel to ensure that a consistent date value is transferred.

, SpreadsheetSetRange and SpreadsheetSetCell read/write values as date-numbers when they are dates. For example, if Excel

  • Sequence(date1,date2) produces date-numbers even when the «dateUnit» parameter is omitted.

Expressions

  • You can now use multi-stage cascaded inequality expressions where a logical expression is expected. For example:

If 0 < p <= 1 Then ... Else ...

This is equivalent to writing:
If 0 < p And p <= 1 Then ... Else ...
  • The use of parentheses changes the interpretation. For example:
If 0 < (p <= 1) Then ... Else ...
tests that the boolean value, p<=1, is greater than 0. The effect here is to test just that p<=1.
  • This syntax does not create any backward compatibility issues, since a cascaded comparison syntax was rejected in Analytica 4.2.

Built-in Functions

  • A problem was fixed with SpreadsheetRange when howToIndex:8 is used to automatically read the column headers. The column headers were previously offset by an amount related to the position of range in the original spreadsheet.

Optimization

  • The processing of structured constraint expressions has been dramatically generalized in build 22. Formerly, constraints has to consist of an equality or inequality expression at the top level of the expression. With the new processing, the inequality can occur inside If-Then-Else expressions, Table cells, User-Defined Functions, after Local Variables are declared, inside Dynamic, etc. The following demonstrate possible definitions of a Constraint object that would not be accepted:
  • Inside sub-expressions:

If I<5 Then x<=y Else x>=y

  • Inside table cells:

Table(J)( 3*x+4*y >= 2, 7*x+5*y <= 3, x <= y^2 + Cos(z) )

FlowEquality(x1,x2,x3)

where
Function FlowEquality( z : ... ) := Sum(z) = 0

Var a:=x/y;
Var b:=y/x;
a+b <= a-b

  • Inside dynamic:

Dynamic( Null, Num_planes <= Opt_num_planes[Time-1] )

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