Re: st: For loops, If Statements and Delimiters

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

Any suggestion? Mine would include not using ; as a delimiter.   More
positively, I would always put a space before each brace.

My vague recollection is that there are some very obscure bugs that
can bite with semi-colons, although a search did not turn up a precise
post, but spaces before braces might be the territory.

Nick

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 7:30 PM, Ryan Stevens <stevrl7@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have been having an issue with using for loop and if statements
> together with a semi-colon delimiter. The following is some example
> code for the problem I've come across:
>
> # delimit ;
> local j = 1;
> foreach x of varlist var1-var3{;
>        forval i = 1/12{;
>              if(`j'<3){;
>                  replace `x' = `x'[`i']-`x'[`j'] in `i';
>                  local j = `j' + 1;
>              };
>              else{;
>                  replace `x' = `x'[`i']-`x'[`j'] in `i';
>                  local j = 3;
>              };
>         };
> };
>
> Whenever I try running this I get an error on my if statement, where
> Stata interprets "< 3" as a variable name. Any suggestions for loops
> and if statements using delimiters would be greatly appreciated.
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