Thanks Nick.
Having tried quite a few tricks I am, as you might say, fresh out of sausages.
Only brand "smcl" appears tasty enough to bribe the dogs.
Note (and as documented in the User's Guide, p207) that if the first character
after the "$" is a numeral, Stata is smart enough to interpret this as
currency, not as a global macro, and this is true for -display- or in the
context of specifying text in a graphic. But if you want to specify the *type*
of dollars by inserting a country's abbreviation between the "$" and the
amount, eg $US1000 or $A2000, then the smcl code is the way to go for graph
titles etc.
Phil
Quoting Nick Cox <[email protected]>:
> Here's my story, which just expands one step on what you know:
>
> With the -display- there are just two levels we need to think about:
>
> 1. Stata interprets what we type. Among other things, global
> macros are substituted by their contents.
>
> 2. The -display- code tries to do what it's told.
>
> With
>
> display "price in $US"
>
> Stata's inclination is to treat $US as a global macro,
> which usually doesn't exist, so it's substituted by
> a blank string. That we can fight in the two ways
> you mention, and both work.
>
> With the -scatter- you are seeing the consequences
> of using an ado file which calls other ados. It's
> a Stata principle that behaviour should be the
> same whether something is done by part of
> the executable or an ado or a do file, but that's
> not always possible, given other firm rules.
>
> With -scatter-
>
> scatter price weight, ytitle("price in \$US")
>
> there are more than two levels we need to think about:
>
> 1. Stata interprets what we type. "\$" gets
> mapped to "$". So far, so good.
>
> 2. The -scatter- code tries to do what it's told.
>
> 3. But -scatter- is an .ado and code inside
> that, in this case, there is a call
>
> graph twoway scatter price weight, ytitle("price in $US")
>
> which will fail to do what you for the same reason
> as before. So, in order to get past the guard dogs,
> Agent Ryan, you need a sausage for every dog. Whether there
> is a clever way of nesting \$ I don't know, but I
> doubt it, and in any case that would be an impractical
> strategy, as you would have to know _exactly_ how many sausages
> were needed, or more prosaically how many times your code would
> get interpreted: with the new graphics' deeply nested
> structure, not just of ados but also of class-based
> stuff, goodness knows what the answer is.
>
> Incidentally, this didn't happen with the old graphics
> as what you typed would get interpreted precisely once.
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [email protected]
> > [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Philip Ryan
> > Sent: 21 May 2004 07:37
> > To: [email protected]
> > Subject: st: treatment of "$" in graphics text
> >
> >
> > Page 207 of the Users Guide [U21.3.9] instructs us on how to
> > deal with the
> > "$" character if we wish to display a dollar sign and _not_
> > consider it the
> > marker for global macro expansion. We can either use the "\"
> > character or
> > some smcl code: {c S|} immediately prior to the "$". These
> > devices work
> > for -display-. But only the second, the smcl code, appears
> > to work in text
> > placed on a graphic, eg using -title()- -ytitle()- -label()- etc.
> >
--
Philip Ryan
Associate Professor
Department of Public Health
Associate Dean (IT)
Faculty of Health Sciences
Head, Data Management and Analysis Centre
Department of Public Health and Department of General Practice
University of Adelaide
5005 South Australia
AUSTRALIA
CRICOS Provider Number 00123M
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