st: Formatting and variable problem

[Fred Wolfe <fwolfe@arthritis-research.org>]

I have a program which does various calculation and then ends with the 
following line:

         di as text "{ralign `startcol' : `outname'}" " {c |}" as result 
"{ralign 9: `N' `mean' `sd' `se' `median' `min' `max' `lci' `uci'}"

If  any of the macros are empty (`N' `mean' `sd' `se' `median' `min' `max' 
`lci' `uci'), as would often be expected, then no result for the missing 
macro is displayed. However, each missing macro uses exactly 1 character 
space. Therefore the output is not uniform as to spacing, and it is hard to 
line up titles above the output.

Solutions that have been tried are putting -`N' `mean' `sd' `se' `median' 
`min' `max' `lci' `uci'- into a macro or string of its own, where it can be 
operated on. Doesn't work, Stata doesn't allow.

Is there anyway to make Stata not take 1 character for empty macros? Does 
anyone have an alternative solution for displaying the data uniformly"

Thanks,

Fred Wolfe



---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
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Fred Wolfe                                                          Tel 
(316) 263-2125
National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases         Fax (316) 263-0761
Wichita, 
Kansas                                    fwolfe@arthritis-research.org
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