Executing Instructions

RATS is a command-driven application. You do most of your work in RATS by supplying an instruction or set of instructions for RATS to process or "execute." For example, to estimate an ordinary least squares regression, you execute a LINREG instruction.

In interactive mode, you can execute instructions as you type them in, or you can select and execute an entire block of instructions. You can also run in batch mode, where RATS automatically executes all the instructions on a file and sends the output to another file. The following information tells you how to execute instructions in interactive mode. Please see the Introduction for further details.

Also, note that the menu-driven Wizards on the Data/Graphics, Statistics and Time Series menus, menus provide a point-and-click interface for generating many common RATS instructions.

To execute RATS instructions, the following conditions must be true:

1.The input window must be the active (front) window.

2.RATS must be in the "Ready" mode, as indicated by the status of the Ready/Local button on the toolbar—it should show not .

When these conditions are true, RATS is ready to accept and execute instructions (see Windows and Ready vs. Local Mode for more on this).

Assuming that you are working with the input window and are in Ready mode, you can execute instructions by doing any of the following:

a.If you are typing in a new line, hitting <Enter> or clicking on the "run" toolbar icon will execute that line.

b.To execute a single line you've already typed in, just put the cursor anywhere on the line and hit <Enter> or click on the "Run" icon.

c.To execute a block of lines, first select the desired block of text using the keyboard or the mouse. Then hit the <Enter> key or click on the icon.

Note that any output generated by RATS will be sent to the output window. This may or not be the same as the input window.