st: RE: skip functions containing missing variables?

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

We need care over terminology here. A missing variable in your sense is perhaps better described as a variable that is not present in the dataset. 

It is easy for a reader to confuse that situation with a variable that is present but contains missing values. 

-capture- is probably what you need. 

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

Michael Costello

I have about 25 databases with similar (but not exactly the same)
variable lists.  I want to "clean" them up by adjusting labels,
formats, etc.  Is there a way to have stata simply skip an absent
variable so taht I can run the same .do file on every database?  For
example:

one.dta varlist: gender age date grade speed
two.dta varlist: gender date grade speed

Since age is missing from the second database if I run a script saying
"label variable age "How old is the student?" " stata would stop
running because of an error.  Or, if I tried to change the order of
the (present) variables, it would have an error when it came to the
missing age variable.

So is there a way I can avoid this error?  Is there some prefix that
says: Do only when variables are present?


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