Re: st: semicolon in local, under delimit ;

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

This recipe shows one technique for building up a local macro with
pieces in " ":

local foo
local f1 just waking up
local f2 stretch and groan
local f3 stuff
local f4 breakfast

forval j = 1/4 {
    local foo `" `foo' "`f`j''" "'
}

mac li

_foo:            "just waking up" "stretch and groan" "stuff" "breakfast"
_f4:            breakfast
_f3:            stuff
_f2:            stretch and groan
_f1:            just waking up

Nick
njcoxstata@gmail.com


On 6 February 2014 21:32, David Kantor <kantor.d@att.net> wrote:

> 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.)
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