Maureen Paul
>
> Thanks very much for your help. However, permit me to restate my
> problem. It is like this: If I do not specify "tempvar y`x'iqq
> y`xless1'iqq;" within the loop as below, I get the error message that
> "too few variables specified" which after using 'set trace on' and
> 'mat li' translates into "global macro $ge is not recognised" or
> something like that. On the other hand, including it solves that
> problem but introduces another - looping through encounters tempvar
> again and yields the error message that the variable has already been
> created.
>
> I suppose, what I would like to know is whether tempvar and tempname
> cannot be used in the way that I am trying to and if so, is there any
> other way I can get the programme to automatically drop variables
> without me having to explicitly tell it to do so? As you can see
> below, the names y`x'iqq y`xless1'iqq are set to change as x and
> xless1 changes.
>
>
> if `j'~=`depmax' { ;
> tempvar y`x'iqq y`xless1'iqq;
> capture drop `y`x'iqq' ;
> if _rc == 0 { local dropvar="`dropvar' `y`x'iqq`" } ;
> ge `y`x'iqq' = 0 `if' ;
> replace `y`x'iqq'=( `phiwj' ) / ( `PHIwj' -
> `PHIwj_1' ) if `1'==`j'
> & `ifexp' ;
> } ;
Sorry, I can't follow most of this, but in your code
fragment you are trying to drop a temporary variable before it
has been created. I think Stata can only object.
The heart of the matter can be shown by trying to run this:
tempvar foo
drop `foo'
gen `foo' = 0
and you can do this interactively.
What -tempvar- does is basically set up a name for you to refer to when
you want to -generate- or (later) use a temporary variable.
It does not create that variable. Thus you won't get past the -drop-
command: there is no variable `foo' to -drop- at that point.
In fact, you could also use -tempname- for this, which makes the
logic of what you are doing a bit clearer:
tempname foo
drop `foo'
gen `foo' = 0
Nick
[email protected]
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