Glad you got it sorted, Neil.
This however begs for a better error trapping and messaging in
-joinby- as your situation would not be a unique case.
As a general comment - I think -pause- is an underused debugging tool.
While -trace- can be very useful in dynamically tracking program flow
and the expansion of, for want of a better term, "conventional
macros," there are times when there is no substitute for stopping
program flow and checking the current state of data and memory through
-des- -list- -mac dir- -return list- and so on. If you use macro
extended functions, you may have to -display- them to ensure they are
being interpreted as you expect.
DCE
2009/2/10 Neil Shephard <[email protected]>:
> Apologies for the delay in replying.
>
> Thanks to David & Austin for suggestions.
>
> Before digging in and debugging in depth as David helpfully suggested
> I thought I'd check Austin's suggestion that one of the files has zero
> observations, and it appears that this is indeed the root cause, due
> to an earlier merge and removal of anyone who didn't match in both
> datasets, which in this instance was everyone).
>
> Correcting the earlier merge meant that there were observations in the
> file that is being used in the call to -joinby-.
>
> Apologies for the (obvious!) oversight and thanks for the pointers.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Neil
>
> --
> "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and
> I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
>
> Email - [email protected]
> Website - http://slack.ser.man.ac.uk/
> Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/slackline/
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
--
David Elliott
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.
-- Robert A. Heinlein (American science-fiction Writer, 1907-1988)
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
