On Friday 21 May 2004 I asked
Which would we nominate as (say) the top ten tricks which are the
deepest and most Stataish features in what we use? What is _both_
simple _and_ deep? What leads to great results with at most a few
lines of code?
...
I'd nominate straight away
1. -by:-.
2. -foreach- or -forval- with varlists or numlists.
3. -merge-. I rarely use it but -merge-masters have real leverage
in file manipulations.
4. -assert-. My candidate for the most underestimated command in
Stata (second is -count-).
5. -reshape-.
Any other nominations?
Nick
[email protected]
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Here is a compilation of responses, edited a bit. I omitted some
very general comments and the most facetious suggestions. I don't
think everyone was playing exactly the same game, not that it
matters....
Nobody seems to have mentioned the -generate()- option of -gsort-, which
can be very useful for making non-byable programs byable, especially in
combination with -levels-. Typically, if -do_whatever- is a non-byable
program, then the user can write
