IIRC, Stata -- like many other programming languages -- interprets the \ as
an "escape" character, meaning: "rather than interpret the next character in
a programming context, interpret it literally." That is, by placing \` in
your command, you told Stata, "I really want a ` in the file name, rather
than use the ` to signify the beginning of a macro substitution."
By using \\, you "escaped the escape" -- you told Stata: \ = "interpret the
next character literally" + \ = "as a backslash", which placed the backslash
in the file name. Notice that the second \ is interpreted literally instead
of as an escape character, so the ` began the macro substitution as you
expected.
****************
Best wishes
Stefan
Dr. Stefan Gawrich
Hesse State Health Office
Wolframstrasse 33
35683 Dillenburg
Germany
>
> Is it possible to use the foreach function for part of the
> name of a file or
> part of a variable name?
> I would like to write something similar to what below (in
> which there is
> something wrong, but I do not know if it is only a matter of
> quotes or so or
> it is not possible to do what I want to do), where the x
> indicates the wave
> so that the file has the same name just differing in the wave
> they were
> collected, as well as the variable sin the files, they are
> the same but they
> are preceeded by a letter indicating the wave.
>
> foreach x in a b c d e f g h u j k l m n o p q r s t u {
> use "D:\Project\Data_anal\GSOEP\CD1984-2004\"`x'"kind.dta"
> sort persnr
> save "D:\Project\Data_anal\GSOEP\CD1984-2004\"`x'"kind.dta", replace
> use "D:\Project\Data_anal\GSOEP\My analyses\temp\"`x'"p_mar.dta"
> sort persnr
> merge using
> "D:\Project\Data_anal\GSOEP\CD1984-2004\"`x'"kind.dta", keep
> ("`x'"kzahl "`x'"hhgr)
> drop _merge
> save "D:\Project\Data_anal\GSOEP\My
> analyses\temp\"`x'"p_mar.dta", replace
> }
>
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
