Re: st: RE: mulitple comments using // and #d;

["Michael S. Hanson" <mshanson@mac.com>]

�.

On Sep 1, 2006, at 5:07 PM, SamL wrote:

> Please don't do follow Mike's advice. Elegant though it may be to 
> retire
> -delimit-, several factors necessitate maintaining the command. I'll
> mention only two.
[snip]

> One need not use delimit if one does not want to do so. But retiring 
> the
> command? That seems unwarranted.
>
> On Fri, 1 Sep 2006, Michael S. Hanson wrote:
>
>
> > At best, I would suggest, it is a relic of times gone by, and should 
> > be depreciated in favor of ///.
Sam (and others):

    Notice I never suggested that the -delimit- command be eliminated.  
It obviously would be undesirable for legacy code.  As noted above, I 
suggested it  should be depreciated.  Type -help fit- for one example 
of depreciated code.

	You could still use -fit- to estimate a linear regression -- indeed, I 
have a colleague who uses it frequently -- but it is depreciated:  
there are no examples of -fit- in the manuals (that I could find), and 
it is not recommended (or even mentioned) to most users.  Due to the 
occasional unusual behavior of -delimit- (evidenced both by the 
exchange earlier in this thread and my own experience teaching Stata in 
my courses), I would suggest that it too be depreciated.  
Substantively, I would like to encourage those who provide code for 
learning Stata (manuals, on-line resources, etc.) eschew the use of 
-delimit- and * comments, and adopt the more modern use of // comments 
and /// line continuations.

	Obviously, individual users are free to use whatever conventions they 
prefer -- just as people can still use -fit- if they choose.  But when 
there exist alternatives that are better for most users, IMO those 
should be promoted.

                                        -- Mike


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