st: re: text manipulation of tabulate output

[Kit Baum <Baum@bc.edu>]

Jacob said

This does not work if a categorical variable has a large number of  
categories; apparently there is a fairly small limit on how large a  
local macro can be.

WRONG! This is a common programming mistake (see Appendix B of my  
book). A statement like

local UNSORTEDLEVELS=r(levels)

is killing you because it has an equals sign, limiting the LHS to the  
possible length of a Stata string variable. The equivalent statement  
without the equals sign will allow the contents of macro r(levels) to  
be copied to UNSORTEDLEVELS up to the maximum length of a local  
macro, which is at least 165 Kbytes in all but Small Stata. In fact  
in Stata/SE and Stata/MP a local macro can contain over one million  
characters (-help limits-).

Kit

Kit Baum, Boston College Economics and DIW Berlin
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata:
http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html


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