Notice: On April 23, 2014, Statalist moved from an email list to a forum, based at statalist.org.
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: st: c(mode) with console Stata on OS X
From
"William Gould, StataCorp LP" <[email protected]>
To
[email protected]
Subject
Re: st: c(mode) with console Stata on OS X
Date
Mon, 02 May 2011 13:29:12 -0500
Concerning Mac OS X, Phil Schumm <[email protected]> wrote,
> Today I fired up an old tool chain that threw an error because c(mode)
> doesn't seem to exist under console Stata on OS X (and therefore code
> that uses this to detect whether Stata is running in batch mode didn't
> work).
It appears that Phil has found a bug, and not just on the Mac. I just
observed exactly what Phil reports on a Linux box, and it appears to
me that the bug has been there for years.
Stata originally had $S_MODE. The global macro contained nothing (did
not exist), or contained "batch" if Stata was running in batch mode.
Originally, only console versions of Stata could not run in batch mode.
Over the years, GUI versions of Stata learned how to run in batch mode
and, separately, we introduced c().
The current state of affairs is
1. All Stata's have $S_MODE that will contain "batch" if running in
batch mode.
2. GUI versions have c(mode), too.
3. Documentation was recast as if c(mode) replaced $S_MODE.
Our intent (I'm guessing based on our records) was that all Stata's
support c(mode), but we made a mistake and never noticed that they
didn't. We here at StataCorp seem to be using $S_MODE, mainly because
we remember better than anyone else older syntax, and we just never
adjusted. Meanwhile, no one outside of StataCorp found the bug until now.
So we will fix it, but we are not going to rush. In the meantime,
I recommend using $S_MODE. It works today, and it will work tomorrow.
To determine if you are running in batch mode, code
if ("$S_MODE"=="batch") ....
to determine if you not running batch, code
if ("$S_MODE"=="") ....
That works on all platforms and will continue to work (and be undocumented).
-- Bill
[email protected]
*
* 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/