Re: st: strange global macros

[Keith Dear <keith.dear@anu.edu.au>]

Hi Gabi,
Macros are strings, neither float nor integer. Your macro $t contains 
"20080421" (without the quotes of course). You need to be careful 
about the datatype of the variable to which you assign a macro value, 
not the macro itself. If you make date_cohort a "long" it will hold 
numbers like 20080421 exactly.
HTH
kd

At 02:13 AM 24/04/2008, you wrote:

> Got it, thank you.
>
> Do you know if there is any way to get macros to recognize large
> integers as such and respond by storing them as long instead of float?
>
> For this particular project I just replaced date_cohort with a Stata
> date formated as %d. It's even easier on the human eye than the
> YYYYMMDD format and it sorts properly.
>
> Gabi
>
> On 4/23/08, Austin Nichols <austinnichols@gmail.com> wrote:
> > . di 20080421
> >  20080421
> >
> >  . di float(20080421)
> >  20080420
> >
> >  See
> >  help data_types
> >  and note that if date_cohort were double or long you would face no
> >  precision problem.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >  On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 11:09 AM, Gabi Huiber <ghuiber@gmail.com> wrote:
> >  > I am having some trouble getting global macros to represent 
> numbers properly.
> >  >
> >  > Every week I receive some csv files that are named things like 
> file_20080331.csv
> >  >
> >  > I use these files in a series of do-files that reference them as
> >  > file_${t}.csv, and all is well.
> >  >
> >  > However, when at the very end I produce a rolling summary report file
> >  > where I want to record the date in the same format, I am getting a
> >  > surprise result. I am doing this:
> >  >
> >  > [...]
> >  > local lastline=${cycles}+1
> >  > set obs `lastline'
> >  > replace date_cohort=${t} in `lastline'
> >  > [...]
> >  >
> >  > Yet the date_cohort observation corresponding to ${t}=20080331 is
> >  > 20080332; and the one that corresponds to ${t}=20080421 is 20080420.
> >  >
> >  > It's strange, because if ${t} were anything but 20080421, my do-files
> >  > would produce a "file not found" error when trying to look for that
> >  > day's csv file. So I am sure that ${t} stores the correct value. What
> >  > I am not sure of is why it is rendering it with a day off in either
> >  > direction.
> >  >
> >  > Can anybody help?
> >  >
> >  > Thank you,
> >  >
> >  > Gabi
> >  > *
> >  *
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> >
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Dr Keith B.G. Dear
Senior Fellow in Biostatistics
National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
Tel: 02 612 54865, Fax: 02 612 50740
http://nceph.anu.edu.au/Staff_Students/staff_pages/dear.php
CRICOS provider #00120C

http://canberragliding.org/

*
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