But .a etc. are being compared as string equivalents,
".a" etc., presumably because of this behaviour of -inrange()-
with numeric missings. And it makes sense to ask
whether some string lies between ".a" and ".z"
in ASCII order.
Nick
[email protected]
Richard Williams
>
> 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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