Solved, then. Thank you both. Good thing I asked.
I wrote up the general idea hoping to save readers' time. I meant for
it to replicate exactly what I did, but of course it didn't. This was
one of those productive mistakes, though.
Thank you, Eva, for catching and explaining the difference. I'm not
doing what the code in the 'general idea' section suggests. I'm using
single-value macros as criteria for variable replace's, so all is
well.
Regards,
Gabi
On 4/25/08, Eva Poen <[email protected]> wrote:
> 2008/4/25 Maarten buis <[email protected]>:
>
> > --- Gabi Huiber <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Can you combine the programmer's if with the in-line if?
> > >
> > > General idea:
> > >
> > > if var1<`k' {
> > > replace var2=. if var3=="`w'"
> > > }
> >
> > This is legal, i.e. Stata won't complain, but it will probably not do
> > what you want: -if var1 < `k'- means "if the first value of the
> > variable var1 is less then `k'"
>
>
> I second Maarten. In your application, however, this should not be a
> problem, since you compare the value of one local macro to the value
> of another:
>
> if `hi'<`myseries_n' {
> ...
> }
>
> The -if- programming command is just the way to do that. Be careful
> when using variables in the -if- programming command, though, as
> Maarten explained. -if var1<`k'- is interpreted by Stata as -if
> var1[1] < `k'-.
>
>
> Eva
>
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