Re: st: unexpected behavior with "merge, uniqusing"

[Danielle H Ferry <dferry@nber.org>]

Thanks!

--  
Danielle H Ferry


On Feb 8, 2006, at 12:37 PM, Shannon Driver, StataCorp wrote:


> Danielle H. Ferry <dferry@nber.org> wrote
>
> > When I attempt to merge 2 data files, specifying uniqusing, I get the
> > following error message:
> > . merge year month using `tf_natl', uniqu;
> > variables year month do not uniquely identify observations in the  
> > master data
> > r(459);
> > Isn't the point of the uniqusing option to require that the  
> > "using" data be
> > unique, NOT the "master" data? (Both data files are sorted on the  
> > merge vars).
> > Am I misunderstanding something?
> The problem here is with conflicting legal abbreviations.  "uniqu"  
> is a valid
> abbreviation for "unique" and "uniqusing".  The code intended to do  
> what the
> documentation stated was valid, but the documentation was wrong.
>
> By specifying "uniqu", Stata assumes you specified "unique",  
> therefore it
> verifies that the match variables uniquely identify observations in  
> both the
> master and the using data.
>
> The legal minimum abbreviation for "uniqusing" should be "uniqus".   
> This will
> be fixed in the next ado-file update and corrected in our  
> documentation.
>
> --Shannon Driver
>   sdriver@stata.com
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