RE: st: programming error with -generate-

["Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

Like Martin Weiss, I think this advice is a little too alarmist. Note
that -twoway function- requires reference to -x- as generic argument. 

The thread so far has shown various things. The pessimistic take is that
several people who are experienced users and who should have read the
manual failed to spot something that is a logical consequence of
documented behaviour. (Anyone who did spot it may have had to look
twice, or thrice, to work out what was going wrong, but no matter. This
is not all a quiz against the clock.) 

The optimistic take, which I much prefer, is that several such people
have never been bitten by this possible but fairly unusual situation.
It's probably worth a one-page Tip in the Journal, however. 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Visintainer, Paul

I think I'm beginning to understand.  My concern is that x is such a
generic variable name used by most of us for programming equations.
Perhaps because of its relation to hexadecimal formats, we should just
avoid using it when programming.


*
*   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/