Re: st: error message "label xxx already defined"

[Richard Goldstein <richgold@ix.netcom.com>]

1. you really need to respond to statalist

2. how about value labels?

On 7/10/12 6:52 PM, Xuelian Zhang wrote:
> Dear Rich,
> 
> Thank you for your quick response. I sent this email to your private
> account is because my email was bounced when I sent it to Statalist. 
> 
> Your explanation is quite helpful. But the problem is that I can't find
> any variable labeled as "xxx" in either the master or the using file. To
> be more specific, my using file only has two variables: personid
> (labeled as "personid") and h3cpl (labeled as "h3cpl:w3 whether couple
> household"). However, when I merged it to the master file, I got a
> warning message as "label CPL already defined". But none of the two
> variables in the using file has a label "CPL". Do you know the reason
> why I got such warning message?
> 
> Thank you very much!
> 
> Best,
> Xuelian
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 6:51 PM, Xuelian Zhang <xuelianstata@gmail.com
> <mailto:xuelianstata@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Dear Rich,
> 
>     Thank you for your quick response. I sent this email to your private
>     account is because my email was bounced when I sent it to Statalist. 
> 
>     Your explanation is quite helpful. But the problem is that I can't
>     find any variable labeled as "xxx" in either the master or the using
>     file. 
> 
>     To be more specific, my using file only has two variables: personid
>     (labeled as "personid") and h3cpl (labeled as "h3cpl:w3
>     whether couple household"). However, when I merged it to the master
>     file, I got a warning message as "label CPL already defined". But
>     none of the two variables in the using file has a label "CPL". Do
>     you know the reason why I got such warning message?
> 
>     Thank you very much!
> 
>     Best,
>     Xuelian
> 
>     On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Richard Goldstein
>     <richgold@ix.netcom.com <mailto:richgold@ix.netcom.com>> wrote:
> 
>         you are mis-reading the message from Stata; it is telling you that a
>         label, not a variable, is already defined; in other words, each
>         of the
>         two files has a label with same name; just check that they are
>         defined
>         to be the same in the two files; if they are the same, then you can
>         ignore the warning, not error, message
> 
>         Rich
> 
>         On 7/10/12 1:03 PM, xueliansharon wrote:
>         > Dear all,
>         >
>         > I try to merge two files and always get an error message as
>         "label xxx
>         > already defined". What's more strange is that when I check the
>         master and
>         > using data file, I don't have the variable "xxx". Does anybody
>         know the
>         > reason for this?
>         >
>         > For your information, here are the commands and results:
>         >
>         > command:
>         >
>         > use "D:\work\aa.dta", clear
>         > sort personid
>         > merge 1:1 personid using "D:\work\bb.dta"
>         >
>         > result:
>         > (label xxx already defined)
>         >
>         > command:
>         > tab xxx
>         >
>         > result:
>         > variable xxx not found
>         >
>         > Thank you very much for your time!
>         >
>         > Best,
>         > Xuelian

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