Re: st: long macro

[n j cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

The issue is not whether it is a string. It is
that you are evaluating when you should be copying.
The limit that bites is different.

Given Stata 9, -while- is less direct than -forval-.

local codelist
forval i = 1/`= _N' {
       local codelist `codelist' `=icd10code[`i']'
}

That said, what you want is already provided by either
-levelsof- in official Stata or the -valuesof- just
announced by Ben Jann.

Nick
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk

Seb Buechte

It looks to me like you are entering a "string" into the local macro
and strings in Stata are limited to 244 characters. You may to try
this:

local i=1
local codelist
while `i'<= _N {
       local codelist `codelist' `=icd10code[`i']'
       local ++i
       }

Dedman, Dan

> I was trying to create a macro that contained a long list of (icd10) 
codes that are stored in a temporary dataset. There are 290 obs and 
icdcode is str4 variable, so I reasoned that thereshould not be any 
problem storing this many characters in a macro. Intercooled stata has a 
limit of around 68000 characters in a macro, so I was surprised to find 
that the that the code works fine until "`codelist'" reaches 244 
characters in length. After that it fails to grow in subsequent iterations.
>
> My code looks like this:
> <snip>
> version 9
> local i=1
> local codelist
> while `i'<= _N {
>         local codelist = "`codelist'" + " " + icd10code[`i']
>         local ++i
>         }
> <snip>
>
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