st: Separation anxiety (extreme penalty if mistype -separate- command)

["Feiveson, Alan H. (JSC-SK311)" <Alan.H.Feiveson@nasa.gov>]

Hello - More than once I have inadvertently typed something like "sep
var, by(cat)", when I meant to type "separate var,by(cat)" . The result
is an error, but far worse, Stata wipes out my whole data set when I do
this, or even if I simply type "sep":


. use rad_protein_collapsed_4group_binomial.dta

. des,short

Contains data from rad_protein_collapsed_4group_binomial.dta
  obs:            24                          
 vars:            52                          20 Nov 2008 12:42
 size:         4,464 (99.9% of memory free)
Sorted by:  rad  time  group

. sep
invalid syntax
r(198);

. des,short

Contains data
  obs:             0                          
 vars:             0                          
 size:             0 (100.0% of memory free)
Sorted by: 

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