Re: st: Why do `test' and a`test' make a difference?

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

In Stata backslashes have two roles

1. General: As an escape character.

2. Specific, for Windows users so inclined: As a separator within pathnames.

and single left quotation marks ` also have two roles

1. As introducing local macro references.

2. As literal characters, an interpretation you insist on with \`

So

\`test'

is taken as a sign that for some reason for your own you are
protecting the ` of `test', which is why you put the \ in there.

So, don't do that. Use forward slashes for pathname separators, even
in Windows. This advice is spelled out in [U] and again in

SJ-8-3  pr0042  . . . . . . .  Stata tip 65: Beware the backstabbing backslash
        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N. J. Cox
        Q3/08   SJ 8(3):446--447                                 (no commands)
        tip to use forward slash instead of backslash for
        directory and file names

Nick

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Dirk Enzmann
<dirk.enzmann@uni-hamburg.de> wrote:
> Why does the backslash as part of the global macro $path vanish (and `test'
> is not evaluated as a local macro) when immediately combined with the local
> macro `test', although it does not vanish (and the content of `test' is
> displayed) when not immediately combined as shown in the two variants of
> -di- in the example below?
>
> * --- Stata example start: -----------
>
> global path = "d:\my folder\"
> local test = "pre_"
> di "${path}`test'my name.dta"
> di "${path}a`test'my name.dta"
>
> * --- End Stata example. ------------
>
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