st: -confirm variable- does not accept varlist (wildcards)

[László Sándor <sandorl@gmail.com>]

Just a note about something that bit me hard in the last few days:
contrary to the help file, -confirm variable- did not take a string I
meant as a varlist in the form of "q_*" but produced an error that *
is invalid. As the typical use case is with -capture- and -if (_rc)-,
I did not notice that the wrong fork of my code was executed until
quite some time.

To be clear, I am not sure how confirm *should* work with wildcards or
multiple variables anyway, I know. And it does accept abbreviations.
So "q_" does work, and it is even clearer about my intentions. And I
should have tested the code anyway. And I probably should have used
more specific -if (_rc==)- specifications to distinguish the variable
genuinely missing from other errors.

That said, it does not feel right to be bitten by a casual "varlist"
specified in the documentation actually not complying with what
varlists are. A few weeks ago I had a similar issue with ranges of
variables in the keepusing() option of -merge-.

Thanks,

Laszlo
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/