RE: st: check if a macro contains a value

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

I don't see any need for special tricks here. Something like 

if strpos("$steps", "1") { 
	...
} 

will pick up whether 1 was included in the global. 

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

Maarten Buis

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Dimitri Szerman <dimitrijoe@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm running a big do-file which contains several steps. I would like
> to create a macro (a global, I suppose) which contains the steps which
> are to be run.

This sounds like a job for extended macro functions. Below is an
example that I think does what you want. To learn more about this,
type in Stata -help macro-, click on the link for extended macro
functions. In this case I used the "macro extended functions for
manipulating lists".

*---------------- begin example ------------
global steps "1 2 4"

// step 1
local one "1"
if `: list one in global(steps)' {
	di "step 1"
}


// step 2
local two "2"
if `: list two in global(steps)' {
	di "step 2"
}


// step 3
local three "3"
if `: list three in global(steps)' {
	di "step 3"
}


// step 4
local four "4"
if `: list four in global(steps)' {
	di "step 4"
}
*------------------ end example --------------------
(For more on examples I sent to the Statalist see:
http://www.maartenbuis.nl/example_faq )


*
*   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/