st: semicolon in local, under delimit ;

[David Kantor <kantor.d@att.net>]

Hello,
I find that if I have...

#delimit ;

local m1  "abc;def";
disp "`m1'";

-- that works as expected, but...

local m2  `"abc;def"';
disp "`m2'";

chokes on the -local- command. It appears to stop at the first 
semicolon, and renders an "invalid syntax" error.
Apparently, the embedded semicolon signals the end of the command.

Notice that this happens with compound quotes, but not with simple quotes.

Does anyone have experience with this? -- a solution?
I need to use compound quotes because the actual situation has a 
macro with components that have embedded spaces -- so that -foreach- 
will pick up segments of the macro having embedded spaces. Thus, for example,
local m3 `""first item" "second item""'
--is constructed so that -foreach- yields two pieces:
first item
second item
--rather than four pieces:
first
item
second
item

And the real-life application is too big to put on one line, so I use 
#delimit ;.
It worked fine until I added an item having an embedded semicolon.

I use Stata 10. (I plan to upgrade soon.)

Thanks
--David

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