RE: st: Command line syntax for optional and required numeric statements

["Cohen, Elan" <cohened@upmc.edu>]

Stephen,

The following lines of code work fine for me, so you'll need to show us a little more of what you're doing.

Incidentally, I thought the spaces after the -birthday- and -birthmonth- options would bite, but it works fine with them.

- Elan


cap program drop testsyntax
program testsyntax
	syntax [, startyear(real 2000) birthday (real 9) birthmonth (real 1)]
	
	di "`startyear'"
	di "`birthday'"
	di "`birthmonth'"
end
testsyntax
testsyntax, startyear(1981) birthday(5) birthmonth(1)


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Stephen Cranney
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2013 16:25
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: st: Command line syntax for optional and required numeric statements

I'm still getting the "invalid syntax" response. I tried making it all
optional and setting default values just to make it simpler. Now I
have

syntax [, startyear(real 2000) birthday (real 9) birthmonth (real 1)]

I've seen various examples online that have this same format that don't
seem to be having the same problem, so I guess at this point my main
question is: in what situations would Stata return an "invalid syntax"
response based on something put in the "syntax" line in the ado file?
Setting trace on doesn't help because "invalid syntax" is
the first thing that pops up.

Best,

Stephen

On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> The pattern
>
> latestageatbirth(default=50)
>
> isn't correct for options. See -help syntax-. Try e.g.
>
> latestageatbirth(real 50)
>
> Nick
>
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Stephen Cranney <scranney@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>> Apologies if this is simple, but I can't figure this out based on the
>> documentation.
>>
>> I'm writing an ado file and am trying to transfer all the macros I
>> reference inside the file to the command line. Some of the values I want to
>> make required, and some I want to make optional, but with a default value
>> if the option is not taken. All of the macros I want in the command line
>> are numeric.
>> A representative snippet of the code is below, based on what I've been able
>> to figure out from the documentation. It gives me an "invalid syntax"
>> response when I try to "birthsim, startyear(2000)...". It works when I do
>> it with args, but obviously that's much more cumbersome than syntax in this
>> context.
>>
>> program birthsim, rclass
>> version 11.2
>> syntax startyear(integer) endyear(integer)  [,latestageatbirth(default=50)
>> ]
>>
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