There was a while back a limit of 7 on the number of
characters in a local macro name. Perhaps some earlier statement
in your code is setting the -version- back
so that limit bites.
Nick
[email protected]
Mark Schaffer
> Hi everybody. I've run into some funny behaviour by Stata
> when dealing
> with macros inside a programme.
>
> Here's a snippet of a -trace-. The programme calls -test-,
> then displays
> the results, then uses -tempname- to allocate some more local
> names for
> scalars. It assigns a value to the new local `hpvalue',
> which has been
> given the local variable __00000O. Not shown are two earlier
> lines that
> assigns values to previously-defined locals `hpvalue1' and
> `hpvalue2'.
> The last command asks Stata (8.2, btw) to display the values
> of both of
> these locals.
>
> scalars:
> r(drop) = 0
> r(chi2) = 7.778333995775768
> r(df) = 1
> r(p) = .0052876538356317
> - tempname htest hpvalue hdf hsigma
> - scalar `htest'=r(chi2)
> = scalar __00000N=r(chi2)
> - scalar `hpvalue'=r(p)
> = scalar __00000O=r(p)
> - di "hpvalue1=" `hpvalue' " hpvalue2=" `hpvalue2'
> = di "hpvalue1=" __00000O " hpvalue2=" __00000O
> hpvalue1=.00528765 hpvalue2=.00528765
>
> What is curious is that both `hpvalue1' and `hpvalue2' are
> expanded to the
> local variable that was assigned to `hpvalue', namely __00000O.
>
> Eventually I got rid of the bug by using shorter local macro
> names. But
> `hpvalue1', for example, has only 8 characters. Did I miss a
> bit in the
> manual that says that local macros have to have names with
> fewer than 8 (!) characters?
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