Re: st: Macro Producing Different Results Each Time Executed

[William Sankey <wsankey@gmail.com>]

Thank you all for these insightful comments/answers. This gives me
much to think about and consider--generally I need to understand what
kinds of datasets I'm merging and rarely (if ever) merge m:m.

Thanks again,

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 5:02 PM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> Phil is right here.
> Nick
> njcoxstata@gmail.com
>
>
> On 22 August 2013 22:00, Phil Schumm <pschumm@uchicago.edu> wrote:
>> On Aug 22, 2013, at 3:57 PM, Phil Schumm <pschumm@uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>> That's likely the best guess, looking at your code.  Remember, -sort- is (by default) not stable, and one of the reasons for this is exactly so that problems like this are discoverable.  In the future, whenever you are doing something that is dependent on the sort order of the data, use
>>>
>>>    isid <varlist>, sort
>>>
>>> instead of -sort- to ensure that the order of the dataset is uniquely determined.
>>
>>
>> I see that a few folks have suggested using the -stable- option for sort, but note that that will simply mask the problem instead of solving it.
>>
>>
>> -- Phil
>>
>>
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-- 
William J. Sankey
Johns Hopkins University
MA Public Policy '12

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