st: behaviour of locals

[Sunil Kumar <stuff.sunil@googlemail.com>]

Dear Statalisters,

I'm running Stata 12.0 (update level 8th Aug 2011) on a Mac (10.6.8).
My issue is that if I define a local as part of a do file, it exists
only for that particular execution of the do file, but if I type it
into the command window, it exists till I exit Stata, which is what I
understand to be the expected behaviour.

For example:

 sysuse auto, clear

. local test "price"
. reg `test' mpg

works fine if I type commands into the command window or run a do file
that contains both these lines. But if I run the two commands (local
then reg) separately from a do file, one by one, then the regression
only includes a constant, i.e. the local is missing.

Similarly, if I run the local command from a do file and type anything
involving the local into the command line, then the local is still
missing (blank). Am I misunderstanding how locals should behave? I've
tried the same thing on Stata 11 and the local exists till I exit
Stata, irrespective of whether it was defined in a do file or typed
manually.

Thanks.

Sunil
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