This post seems trivial, but the issue did cost me some non-trivial
debugging time.
It seems that an option named "now" won't work. It can't be that
option names must have more than three characters, because an option
named "yes" works. I used -search now- to see if it's a reserved word,
but got no hits. Although -findit now- is an amusing command to issue,
it's also not surprising that too many results are returned to be
useful for investigation of this minor annoyance.
Eureka (just as I was composing the subject for this post)! I'll
continue to post it anyway for the interest of the non-gurus on the
list. It's the fact that "now" begins with "no". See /optionally_off/
in -help syntax-.
Chris
. program define junk
1. syntax , [now]
2. di "`now'"
3. end
. junk, now
. program drop junk
. program define junk
1. syntax , [blah]
2. di "`blah'"
3. end
. junk, blah
blah
. program drop junk
. program define junk
1. syntax , [yes]
2. di "`yes'"
3. end
