Eva, if you want to type help mycommand2008 and see the help file
mycommand.hlp insert a line into the maintanence file for letter m
"mhelp_alias.maint":
mycommand2008 <TAB> mycommand
this is just an alias definition:
A <TAB> B
A must be unique
B may be not unique
A need not be a shorter form of B; B need not be a shorter form of A.
E.g. you will see the following in the standard files:
_n _variables
which have nothing in common (in terms of spelling)
Try it: type help _n and you will get help for "_variables".
What Nick means is how to organize a link within a help file to
another help file, which is different. A file commandi.sthlp must
still exist, and well as all other files one for each of allowed
abbreviation. With the aliases - only one help file will exist in
total, and a number of entries in the aliases table. Nick's solution
is preferable, because it is "documented/recommended", but Stata,
Corp. itself uses the other way described above. Correct me if I am
wrong. This however works only for the help files, and not for the
commands themselves. So you still have to define ado files regr.ado
and regre.ado, which do nothing but call regress.ado
Perhaps someone from Stata, Corp. could tell us if the changes
introduced by the users to these files will survive updates (or will
be overwritten after Stata updates) and if there is a way to
manipulate those files in a user-firendly manner (e.g. defining
aliases by users themselves).
Eva may also be interested in command -checkhlpfiles-, which can be
called like so:
checkhlpfiles help, system
It will report something like this:
(1937 *.sthlp files)
(0 *.hlp files)
(307 *.ihlp files)
(6156 aliases)
Errors
.... unmatched help references:....
Leaves
....
