Agree, and I feel duly chastened. This is yet another example of how,
when it seems like Stata does the same thing in more than one way,
you're probably overlooking something. I always thought that when
declaring locals the = and the lack of it were interchangeable. That
was silly.
Gabi
On Feb 12, 2008 4:46 PM, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> As Gabi later replied, this was the nub of the problem.
>
> Note that this gotcha is prominently documented.
>
> In the Stata 10 manuals, it is documented at [U] 18.3.4.
>
> Every once in a while, every serious Stata user really should just sit
> down and read [U]. Naturally, you can skim and skip the bits you know
> already, and the bits you think you know you don't need right now, but
> you'll discover, or rediscover, many crucial details, like this one.
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
> Nick Winter
>
> Without considering the larger logic of what you are doing, this line is
>
> probably the/a problem:
>
> local mergeby`k'="`mergeby`k'' `var'`k'"
>
> When you use the equal sign, you are telling Stata to evaluate the
> string that follows; that gets truncated to 244 characters (which is the
>
> limit on the length of a string expression; see help limits).
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