RE: st: RE: RE: RE: RE: error messages while using the stgest command

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

Yes, that's my guess. 

If it gets as far as the -graph- command then the local macro options is
discovered at that point, and only then, to contain junk that Stata
can't make sense of. 

It's my impression that in this sense Stata has not changed for some
while. Any parsing that leaves a residuum of buggy material in some
local macro will not bite unless and until that macro is scrutinised. 

Here's a demo: 

Here's a program: 

program martin
	syntax [, * ] 
	sysuse auto, clear
	regress mpg weight 
end

Here I run it: 

. martin, complete and utter nonsense

(1978 Automobile Data)

      Source |       SS       df       MS              Number of obs =
74
-------------+------------------------------           F(  1,    72) =
134.62
       Model |   1591.9902     1   1591.9902           Prob > F      =
0.0000
    Residual |  851.469256    72  11.8259619           R-squared     =
0.6515
-------------+------------------------------           Adj R-squared =
0.6467
       Total |  2443.45946    73  33.4720474           Root MSE      =
3.4389

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
         mpg |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf.
Interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------
------
      weight |  -.0060087   .0005179   -11.60   0.000    -.0070411
-.0049763
       _cons |   39.44028   1.614003    24.44   0.000     36.22283
42.65774
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

What happened: 

1. I typed as if they were options "complete and utter nonsense". 

2. A consequence of the -syntax- statement is that a local macro options
is created with contents "complete and utter nonsense". 

3. My program never actually used `options'. Thus my program never bit
me, and Stata never complained, even though I typed (you guessed) some
nonsense on the command line. 

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

Martin Weiss

So, given your experience of Stata 7, Nick: Did the misplaced
paranthesis
somehow end up in the -options- for the -graph- command? The error
message
initially reported by Victor in
http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2010-06/msg00133.html would seem
to
indicate this sequence of events.

Nick Cox

The first error now seems pretty clear.  

The parenthesis ( before lasttime(endfudate) is what is causing the
error. Delete it. 

(You are probably misreading the syntax diagram within which the square
brackets [ ] group together optional options and are not characters to
be typed.)  

Victor Mauricio Herrera

Regarding the first error, I included no graph options in my
instructions. This is exactly what I typed:

stgest diabetes cursmoke agebase sex hyperten obese, lagconf(hyperten
obese diabetes) baseconf(hyperten obese diabetes) /*
*/ visit(visit) firstvis(2) (lasttime(endfudate) range(-50 50) step(1)
saveres(caergestsmoknocens) replace

I tried with two different datasets and got the same error.


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