Re: st: Re: inconsistent response to same syntax

["Zurab Sajaia" <zsajaia@hotmail.com>]

Gabi,
Questions about command parsing can be answered best by the folks at 
StataCorp I guess ...
but I'd think your problems might be related to the line-by-line command 
reading, to figure out how to run a loop,
Stata reads (my assumptions) the line from word "foreach" till the first "{" 
sign, and then evaluates that line for different possible syntaxes
like  in, of varlist, of local, of global etc, so allowing another pair of 
{} might make this very difficult or impossible (imagine global containing 
some more symbols like { or }) ...

Again, there might be another explanation but I personally prefer to think 
that although Stata is very smart, it can't always guess what I mean or want 
so I try not to confuse it :)

Best,
Zurab




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gabi Huiber" <ghuiber@gmail.com>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 11:40 AM
Subject: Re: st: Re: inconsistent response to same syntax



> Thank you. My main concern was to use the same syntax everywhere in
> case I ever have to parse these do-files in some automatic fashion.
> Your solution will do it nicely.
>
> But it's still unclear what causes the inconsistency in the first
> place, and I'm curious.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Gabi
>
>
> On 6/6/08, Zurab Sajaia <zsajaia@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > In this case it might be better to use different syntax of -foreach-
> >
> >  foreach k of global dates {
> >  }
> >
> >
> >  ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gabi Huiber" <ghuiber@gmail.com>
> >  To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
> >  Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 11:03 AM
> >  Subject: st: inconsistent response to same syntax
> >
> >
> >
> > > Hello listers,
> > >
> > > I got into the habit that I use the ${globalmacro} syntax instead of
> > > the plain $globalmacro, on the chance that I sometimes have to combine
> > > such macro names within other macro or variable names.
> > >
> > > But this syntax sometimes elicits an error message from Stata, like so:
> > >
> > > foreach k in ${dates} {
> > > program error:  code follows on the same line as open brace
> > > r(198);
> > >
> > > At other times, Stata doesn't mind. In this particular example I
> > > declared the ${dates} macro in one do-file, and used it with foreach
> > > as shown above within the same do-file without a problem.
> > >
> > > Then another do-file called and executed the first do-file, and later
> > > attempted to make use of the same ${dates} macro in another foreach
> > > construct. It was this second time that I got the error response
> > > above.
> > >
> > > The syntax $dates in this second foreach loop is accepted and all is
> > > well. But I can't find any reason for this inconsistency. Both
> > > syntaxes should always work.
> > >
> > > Any ideas?
> > >
> > > Thank you,
> > >
> > > Gabi
> > > *
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> > >
> > >
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