@tyneises that is a correct understanding. We also discussed updating the precheck routine to issue a warning when this action is triggered, @sjanzou is that in this PR as well or will that be separate? (I understand that warnings in scripts are not as useful as they are in the UI, but that's perhaps a separate conversation). However, we discussed that this change will still trigger any var_table prechecks where the array length is checked, even if the type gets changed, and it obviously also will trigger any exec-level errors about array length (which should be checked anywhere an array is used).

That said, this is definitely not a perfect solution- it was the best balance between crashing every financial script ever created, giving the user some information, and ease of development given the imminence of the release, that we could think of, and we all agreed a more elegant solution is in order after the release.

We also discussed updating the precheck routine to issue a warning when this action is triggered, @sjanzou is that in this PR as well or will that be separate? (I understand that warnings in scripts are not as useful as they are in the UI, but that's perhaps a separate conversation).

This PR does include the warnings. For example setting itc_fed_amount = 300 results in Notice: precheck input: variable 'itc_fed_amount' input type changed from <number> to single element <array>. time -1.000000

These simulation warnings are not always obvious in PySAM.

Tested and working in SDKtool: number-to-array-tests-sdktool.zip

This solution does not work for LK in SAM. When a script sets an input to a value of the wrong type, the value of the input does not change and you don't get any feedback: For example, try this script with a PVWatts - Single Owner case: number-to-array-test.zip

Code looks good to me.

PySAM tests pass (except the REopt test, which hung and had to be cancelled - I think that's unrelated), however PySAM examples fail, and changes to PySSC are required as per: #906 (comment) - I'll work on that this afternoon.

@tyneises that is a correct understanding. We also discussed updating the precheck routine to issue a warning when this action is triggered, @sjanzou is that in this PR as well or will that be separate? (I understand that warnings in scripts are not as useful as they are in the UI, but that's perhaps a separate conversation). However, we discussed that this change will still trigger any var_table prechecks where the array length is checked, even if the type gets changed, and it obviously also will trigger any exec-level errors about array length (which should be checked anywhere an array is used).

That said, this is definitely not a perfect solution- it was the best balance between crashing every financial script ever created, giving the user some information, and ease of development given the imminence of the release, that we could think of, and we all agreed a more elegant solution is in order after the release.

@tyneises , @janinefreeman , @cpaulgilman , this pull request is for ssc only and for pysam and scripting against ssc only. The conversion in SAM scripting and updating old project files will be a separate pull request. Thanks for reviewing!