st: Re: problem with embedded quotes in strings

[Kit Baum <baum@bc.edu>]

I'm not fully convinced that this sort of thing is impossible in Stata 
pre version 9 (although it is probably much more elegantly and 
efficiently done as you have, in Mata). If you construct a 
tab-delimited file such as

1       john's string   999
2       mary's string   998
3       nick's "Ole Nick" string        997

and apply the program ltype, which appears in Stata 8.x -help file-, it 
handles the embedded single and double quotes successfully:

. ltype test.raw
   1  1 john's string   999
   2  2 mary's string   998
   3  3 nick's "Ole Nick" string        997

Since macros may be very long indeed (even in Stata 8.x) the limit on 
length is not really binding.

Kit Baum, Boston College Economics
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html

On Jun 22, 2005, at 2:33 AM, David wrote:


>  Those who have written ado
> programs will note that nearly everything I accomplished could have 
> been done in
> Stata if not for the built-in limit on string length and/or 
> (mis)handling of
> quotes.  It is unfortunate that it took Mata to do this, because it is 
> not
> available to anyone using an older release of Stata.  On the other 
> hand, as a C
> programmer, I can't recommend Mata enough.  It's actually better than 
> sliced
> bread....
>
> D. Moore
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