Roger Newson
>
> >I am very curious about why you want to read columns of
> >program code into string variables. If I wanted to
> >process code or package files as text, I would do
> >it in a text editor or scripting language.
>
> The specific application that got me thinking along these
> lines was website
> maintenance. In my website (under construction at
> http://www.kcl-phs.org.uk/rogernewson/ ), I have multiple
> .htm files,
> .toc files, .pkg files, .zip files, .ado files and .do
> files. When I add
> packages to my website, I run a Stata program that reads
> all the .pkg
> files, collects the title line in each one, and generates
> lists of packages
> in the .toc files and in tables in the .htm files. A
> package such as
> -intext- would make it easier to add further bells and
> whistles. However,
> there are probably many other file-bashing applications
> where this approach
> would be less bother, and more reliable, than a mixture of
> manual text
> editing and DOS scripts.
What's practical and what's attractive to users will vary,
but not even Windows/DOS users are limited to DOS.
There are any number of Unix-originating programs ported to
Windows/DOS which could make this much easier. The downside
of course is the finite time and effort needed to become
competent in another appllication.
> >I think quotes are easier than you think. Compound double
> >quotes don't do any harm beyond adding some visual complexity
> >to what you read. If this is not true for you, there's a bug
> >somewhere.
>
> See Nick Winter's second reply re the ` (left prime) character.
And, ditto, my reply, understood as role play (counsel
for the defence to Nick Winter's prosecution counsel).
> This is precisely the problem I am trying to get round.
> Primes mess up
> macro quoting, which also converts \\ , \$ and \` character
> pairs to \ , $
> and ` characters, respectively. And I don't write many
> Stata programs
> without macros. Presumably, however, the macros used in a
> Stata program are
> stored somewhere, in their pre-quoted form.
Absolutely.
Stata at the lowest level reads in everything it receives
from anywhere, the user plus -- commands,
data, whatever -- byte by byte.
The Stata that we mortals interact with interprets our
commands, fine except for this one small fraction
(who knows? 0.001%?) of Stata usage.
Nick
[email protected]
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