Re: st: semicolon in local, under delimit ;

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

Hello.
Thanks to both Nicks for the suggestions.

I note that the technique of building up a local macro with pieces in 
" ", as in the response from Nick Cox, works fine under -delimit ;-, 
even with embedded semicolons, as long as you don't use compound quotes.
Also the command inside the loop,
   local foo `" `foo' "`f`j''" "'
works fine under -delimit ;-, even with embedded semicolons -- noting 
that during its iteration it would appear to expand to include 
compound quotes and embedded semicolons.
The explanation is that the command is parsed once, prior to the 
iterations; the embedded semicolon does not appear at that stage.

The suggestion by Nick Winter to use /// is helpful in some 
situations, but it doesn't work in the middle of a macro evaluation.
Nor is /*
*/

Thanks
--David

At 05:34 PM 2/6/2014, you wrote:
> 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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