Problem with GET DIRECT CONSTANTS

[John Swanson]

I'm in the process of adapting a large model for use in Forio. The model uses a lot of GET XLS CONSTANTS commands to read data from a spreadsheet with multiple tabs. Forio doesn't allow GET XLS CONSTANTS, but it can use GET DIRECT CONSTANTS, so I've replaced all the GET XLS commands with GET DIRECT. What I now find is that in Vensim 5.10e this works fine for spreadsheets with a single tab, but not for the spreadsheet with multiple tabs: I get an error saying it can't find values in one of the tabs. In Vensin 6.3D, however, it works properly with multiple tabs. So it looks like there's a problem with 5.10e. You might say I should just use v6.3D, but 5.10e is still my preferred version, because of long running bug problems in V6. By the way, I also found that GET DIRECT CONSTANTS works with .xlsx files, but not .xlsm; GET XLS CONSTANTS works with both.

[Administrator]

What long running bug problems are you referring to? Any bugs in 6.3 would probably also be 5.11e.

[John Swanson]

What long running bug problems? It took 15 months to get an acceptably working version of the 64 bit software. I first reported bugs in March last year. There were huge problems with its inability to read its own vdf64 files. I had to strip out large chunks of the model's reporting functionality to get it down to a size where it would even run. It's only been possible to compile the model since last month. I've been told 64 bit vensim is only a beta version (the implication being, as I read it, that I was foolish to rely on it, a view I'd now have to agree with).

So, I regard it as too fragile. Anyway, I don't know if Forio will work with 64 bit Vensim models, so I need to use the older version, but there's clearly a bug in the GET DIRECT CONSTANTS function. Like I said, it fails to read from a spreadsheet with many tabs. Ironically version 6.3D manages to read the same spreadsheets correctly.

Thanks
John

[tomfid]

I think you'll find that 6.3d x64 solves file problems and works, though there will be an e release soon that addresses an error that only occurs on Linux. Unfortunately x64 conversion of c code is extremely complex, especially across platforms. Otherwise we'd have been done a lot sooner.

[John Swanson]

OK, but the real subject of the post was that there seems to be a problem with GET DIRECT CONSTANTS in version 5.10.
John

[Administrator]

I'm not sure what we can do. Version 5.10 is 5 years old, and the bug you mention is fixed in the latest version (which Forio is using).

There is no way we can issue a patch for 5.10. The only solution is to use 6.3.