Re abbreviations, I received a private message with pretty much the same
thrust as Kit`s and Michael`s. A few months ago, Svend Juul posted about
this issue and there was no clear decision as to the acceptability or
non-acceptability of abbreviations. I have only been bitten once by them
(and it was immediately obvious to me), but if a clear majority of
Statalisters objected to this pratice, then that would give me food for
thought :-)
BTW, how come I a) have never heard of this autocompletion thing in the
command window b) do not quite get the "YMMV" thing?
HTH
Martin
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] Im Auftrag von Michael Hanson
Gesendet: Sonntag, 1. Februar 2009 20:35
An: [email protected]
Betreff: Re: -varabbrev- setting [was: st: re: question about "testparm"]
On Feb 1, 2009, at 2:05 PM, Kit Baum wrote:
> I deplore the use of abbreviated variable names in posted examples.
> IMHO -set varabbrev on- is a terrible idea (whether or not it is
> the official default*), and examples should run with it off.
I concur. For new, inexperienced, and/or occasional users, having -
varabbrev on- is (in my experience teaching with Stata) a recipe for
avoidable confusion, errors and lost time. I'd like to join Kit and
encourage those who post examples to Statalist -- particularly
examples aimed at less-than-power users -- to avoid variable name
abbreviations.
Use of the [Tab] key for variable name completion in the Command
window largely mitigates any benefits from -varabbrev on-, in my
experience. YMMV.
Hope this helps,
Mike
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*
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* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
