Re: st: macval() and passing text as is

[n j cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

-macval()- is still supported and still documented. Start with the help 
for -macro-.

I don't know what you mean precisely by "does not work", as you don't say.

What you have should work for a local called -rcmd-. I don't think it 
will work for a global. That is, a local that itself contains ` ' or $ 
will be echo without interpretation to the file you are writing to.

Your posting refers to rcmd and Rcmd. I don't know whether your problem 
arises from a typo. I guess not.

But in general macro evaluation takes place before anything else is 
done. That's the whole point, more or less, from Stata's angle, awkward 
though it may be for your purposes.

Kit Baum, Bill Rising and I grappled with this in developing -log2html- 
on SSC and used -macval()-. That approach works fine in echoing $ signs 
as typed for our purposes, but I doubt that will help you in your 
problem, unless what you do is read in a .do file and then process it 
line by line.

-string asis- and -passthru- within -syntax- have no bearing on this.
The key detail here, as above, is that -syntax- works on a command line 
after all locals and globals have been interpreted, so nothing within 
-syntax- can possibly reverse that. -syntax- will never see or even know 
about e.g. $ characters that were typed on the command line.

Nick
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk

Salah Mahmud

I'm trying to save a string that may contain a Stata reserved
characters (eg $) into a text file.  The problem is Stata keep
intrepreting the string so the string "xx$Test" is interpreted into
"xx".

I tried coding
  file write `rfhandle' `"`macval(rcmd)'"' _n
but this still does not work. I could not find a Help description of
macval. Is it still supported? Why the above line does not work?

rcmd in the above line is passed as an option to this ado file so
there is an Rmcd(string) in the syntax statement. My question when
does Stata interpret the string stored in rcmd? if this happen when
the ado is called then it might be too late to use the macval in the
ado body. If this is the case, is there away of passing the rcmd
option without interpretation? string asis does not seem to work. ?
passthrough?


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