Re: st: Puzzled by behavior of -recode varlist (.a/.z=.)-

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@nd.edu>]

At 12:53 PM 4/23/2004 -0400, Renzo Comolli wrote:
> Dear Statalist,
>
> By reading the manual, I see that there is an instruction
> . recode varlist (missing=.)
> that does exactly what I meant to do, so I am all set as far as my work is
> concerned. I am just curious to understand.
> The bahavior of
> . recode varlist (.a/.z=.)
> resembles
> . recode varlist (nonmissing=.)
> And it looks inconsistent with the rest of the -recode- syntax to me.
>
> Am I just totally confused? Or is there something wrong here?
Definitely sounds like odd behavior to me.  Looking at -recode.ado-, I 
notice there are these lines:

        else if length(`"`v'"')==2  &  inrange(`"`v'"',".a",".z") {
                return local s1 `v'

Now, I haven't waded through the whole ado file, but I wonder if that line 
is doing what it is supposed to do.  According to the online docs for inrange,

    "inrange(z,a,b) returns 1 if it is known that a <= z <= b; otherwise, 
this function returns 0.  If z = missing (.) this function returns 0.  For 
numeric arguments, if a = missing and/or b = missing these values are 
interpreted as a = -infinity and/or b = +infinity, respectively."

Now, I just tried the command

. gen z = inrange(var1, .a, .z)

where var1 was a mixture of missing and nonmissing values, and z = 0 for 
every case.  This is consistent with the docs saying "If z = missing (.) 
this function returns 0" but it is not consistent with what the users 
intent would probably be in this case.

Anyway, it is hard for me to believe that this is not a bug, and my wild 
guess is that it might have something to do with the use of the inrange 
command as shown above.  But, it could be something else.



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Richard Williams, Associate Professor
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