st: RE: macro expansion

["Marino, Jennifer" <jmarino@fhcrc.org>]

It's been pointed out here before, and I've found it helpful, that you
can trace how your macro is evaluating by running

set trace
set tracedepth1

and Stata will give you the translations it's using. I've found that use
of certain kinds of characters in macros immediately gets me into
trouble because Stata reads the character as a stop rather than as a
character. If Stata reads "\" as a stop, then it would store the file
nakedly in the C drive without swapping in the rest of the macro. 

I'm not sure how to overcome this, but I am certain Professor Cox has an
idea.

Jen Marino


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
[mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Sean Shu
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 12:10 PM
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: st: macro expansion


Hi there,

I have following code which let two local macros expand in a file path. 
But after running the looping, the files are saved under C: directly, 
instead of the directory suggested by the code.

local path = "C:/EPI Projects/RRFSS Trends/"
local fname = "Smoking Vehicle\vehicle0"
cd "C:\EPI Projects\RRFSS Trends\data"
forval i = 1/4 {
	insheet cat prop ucl lcl popsize using raw0`i'.txt, clear
	generate year = 200`i'
	save "`path'/`fname'`i'", replace
}

Messages from STATA after running the above code
forval	i	= 1/4 {
2.		insheet cat prop ucl lcl popsize using raw0`i'.txt,
clear
3.		generate year = 200`i'
4.		*save "C:\EPI Projects/RRFSS,	replace
.		save "`path'/`fname'`i'", replace
5. }

(5 vars, 2 obs)
file /1.dta saved
(5 vars, 2 obs)
file /2.dta saved
(5 vars, 2 obs)
file /3.dta saved
(5 vars, 2 obs)
file /4.dta saved

Any one knows what has gone wrong?  Thanks so much!

sean
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