Hi all,
Following a discussion regarding option names that we had here on Friday and then again by mail on Monday, we wanted to open it to further input as there was disagreement between the few of us that are at Chevaleret.
On Friday, we discussed renaming the options that begin with mh_ to begin with mcmc_. Basically, we want to deprecate the mh_ options all the while supporting them for backwards compatibility. We are all in agreement about this and hence opened ticket #644.
On Monday, I had the idea to simply drop mcmc_ completely. In other words, mcmc_replic and mcmc_drop would become, more simply, replic and drop. In the preprocessor we would create rules that would store these in an options_.mcmc substructure, such as options_.mcmc.replic and options_.mcmc.drop.
I spoke with Sebastien about this and his preference is not to make this change, the argument being that 1) by keeping the mcmc_ prefix, it’s more clear to the user what the options mean and 2) that in Dynare, currently, options are global and hence this changes the default behavior as the “replic” option in stoch_simul would not be global with the “replic” option in estimation (i.e., there are two different rules in the preprocessor that match “replic”, depending on which command it is passed to).
With regards to 1), my view was that the options are understood within the context of the command they’re passed to and though the mcmc_ prefix makes it explicit, it’s not ultimately necessary as people get option names and their meanings from the manual. Further, with respect to 2), it seems that Dynare is in the process of transitioning towards non-global options; this has already happened with ms-sbvar, and is happening with estimation, so this change would be along the lines of making that transition.
Via email on Monday, Stephane agreed with my point of view. Hence, Sebastien wanted to open the discussion to more input so we can come to a final decision about this.
Best, Houtan