David -
thank you for your story. i, had made assumptions, erroneous, and then
developed work-arounds for my own limitations.
gh
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Kantor
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 21:26
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: st: RE: RE: date function error?
Interestingly, I recently had a very similar problem.
I have a log-generating program -- an ado. It's not done automatically;
it's called as needed, and it creates a log and runs a specified
do-file.
I was running a do-file that included a date-conversion step. It ran
fine in test runs. Then when I did the "official" run, in conjunction
with with the logging program, it produced all missing values for the
date conversion.
I took a while to figure out the problem. Actually, it took a while to
figure out what conditions created missing values and non-missing
values. Eventually, I found that it was the use of the logging program
that made the difference. Until recently, it was always the case that
the only difference between running with and without the logging program
was the presence of logging. To me, this was a well-established "fact"
that I had taken for granted. But it was no longer true once I
(recently) switched to Stata 10.
The cause of the problem was that the do-file uses the -date()-
function, as in...
gen long datevar = date(date_string_variable, "YMD") and the logging
program has -version 8-, as all my ado files have
-version- commands. The do-file did not have a -version- command. It was
written for Stata 10, but I didn't realize that the logging program
would change the version for the do-file that runs under it
-- to version to 8, wherein "YMD" was not acceptable.
I have it straightened out now, but I thought it was instructive to have
gone through that experience -- and may be instructive to share it with
the rest of you.
--David
At 02:37 PM 6/12/2008, George Hoffman wrote:
>Thank you, Nick.
>well, then the problem is somewhere else. my real question is about a
>automatic log-creation program that i have run from a profile.do file
>at stata startup, which has been malfunctioning.
>[...]
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