How to use normal julia variables in Kezdi macro?

[jmboehm]

I'd like to do the following

setdf(df)
t1 = 2012
@keep @if fiscalyear == t1

and I get

ERROR: ArgumentError: column name :t1 not found in the data frame

because t1 is not a column in df. The only workaround I've found is to use

@keep @if fiscalyear == Main.t1

Is that the preferred method? If so, it might be a good idea to add that to the documentation (where, if i'm not mistaken, the only discussion of Main. is with functions).

[korenmiklos]

Hi @jmboehm, this is something we want to improve. Currently, indeed Main.t1 would be one workaround. Another could be a function:

t1() = 2012
@keep @if fiscalyear == t1()

None of these are ideal. We will likely go to a solution where every variable name reference will be replaced with Kezdi.ref(df, :t1) and the ref() function resolves at runtime whether :t1 is a column name, in which case it returns df.t1, otherwise returns t1. This should work and would be completely transparent to the user. But we have to test it for performance (evals are not great for the compiler).

[jmboehm]

Thanks-- closing this because it is in the docs (I didn't see it).