st: RE: RE: AW: Problems that seem to be the result of a "long command line" in a do file

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

I suspect a quirk within -confa-, which as you say is a user-written
program by Stas Kolenikov. 

As Martin points out, these commands are nowhere any length limit.
Regardless of that, if your command line was being truncated you would
get a different error message much more quickly. 

SJ-9-3  st0169  . . . . . . . . . . . Confirmatory factor analysis using
confa
        (help confa, confa_estat, bollenstine if installed) . . . S.
Kolenikov
        Q3/09   SJ 9(3):329--373
        fits confirmatory factor analysis models by maximum
        likelihood and provides diagnostics for the fitted models

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

Hoogendoorn, Adriaan

Thank you for pointing out the "set trace on" option.
Running the command with the "set trace on" option generated an
impressive amount of code, that confirmed my earlier guess that the
"long command line" was somehow truncated.
At the same time the enormous amount of code made me humble enough to be
not so picky and use the simple solution of renaming the original
variables into shorter variable names. That was not so bad after all,
and worked fine.

Martin Weiss 

" Do you know of a way I can run the first command?
I could use shorter variable names, but I am hoping for a more elegant
solution."

Maybe store the lists in -local-s and have them expanded within the call
to
-confa-? What does -set trace on- tell you about the error?

Hoogendoorn, Adriaan

I encounter some problems that seem to be the result of a "long command
line" in a do file, even though I broke the long command line up into
several parts over several lines (see below).
The problem may be the result of my bad knowledge of Stata on this
point.
I encounter the problem in a call to the 'confa' command in Stanislav
Kolenikov's package that does Confirmatory Factor Analysis (package
st0169
from http://www.stata-journal.com/software/sj9-3).

The call:

confa (list_ae: ru001ae01 ru002ae02 ru003ae03 da001ae01 da002ae02    ///
                da003ae03 vo001ae01 vo002ae02 vo003ae03 vo004ae04 )  ///
      (list_ep: ru005ep01 ru006ep02 ru007ep03 ru008ep04 ru009ep05    ///
                da005ep01 da006ep02 da007ep03 vo005ep01 vo007ep03 )  ///
      (list_et: ru011et01 ru012et02 ru013et03 ru014et04 da011et01    ///
                da013et03 da014et04 vo011et01 vo012et02 vo013et03 )  ///
      , from(smart) iterate(50)

results into the error message "da0 ambigous abbreviation", while the
call:

confa (list_ae: ru001ae01 ru002ae02 ru003ae03 da001ae01 da002ae02
///
                da003ae03 vo001ae01 vo002ae02 vo003ae03 vo004ae04 )
///
      (list_ep: ru005ep01 ru006ep02 ru007ep03 ru008ep04 ru009ep05
///
             da005ep01 da006ep02 da007ep03 vo005ep01 vo007ep03 )   ///
   (list_et: ru011et01 ru012et02 ru013et03 ru014et04 ), from(smart)
iterate(50)

- which is identical to the first call, except that 'list_et' consists
of
four instead of
ten variables - works fine.

Do you know of a way I can run the first command?
I could use shorter variable names, but I am hoping for a more elegant
solution.

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