EViews’ programming features allow you to create and store commands in programs that automate repetitive tasks, or generate a record of your research project.

You may, for example, write a program containing commands that analyze the data from one industry, and then have the program perform the analysis for a number of other industries. You can also create a program containing the commands that take you from the creation of a workfile and reading of raw data, through the calculation of your final results, and construction of presentation graphs and tables.

The remainder of this chapter outlines the basics of EViews programming. If you have experience with computer programming and batch or macro processing, you will find most of the features of the EViews language to be quite familiar. At the same time, non-programmers should feel welcome to examine the material as you need not have any experience with programming to take advantage of these powerful features.