Re: st: quotation marks in do files

[Russell Dimond <rdimond@ssc.wisc.edu>]

I've seen this one before: the trouble is that Word replaces standard 
quotation marks with curly quotation marks which Stata doesn't 
recognize, even when you save the document as text.

My recommended solution is to use a text editor to write programs rather 
than a word processor. Personally I'm a fan of TextPad. But if in Word 
you go to Tools, Autocorrect Options, then the Autoformat As You Type 
tab, and uncheck the box to replace "Straight quotes" with "smart 
quotes" (the irony!) you should avoid this particular issue. Others will 
arise.

Russell Dimond
Research Computing Specialist
Social Science Computing Cooperative
University of Wisconsin-Madison


Malgosia Madajewicz wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> In my do files, I use quotation marks around the directory in which the 
> log and data files reside, because my folder names consist of more than 
> one word. I write the do file in MS Word (2003) and save it as a plain 
> text file. I have the following problem. Stata 7 does not recognize the 
> quotation marks. It puts a question mark in their place and then gives 
> the error message that the second word in a mutilple-word folder name is 
> invalid. Does anyone know how to solve this problem?
>
> For a while my solution was to use MS DOS encoding, but as of today this 
> does not solve the problem any more for some reason.
>
> Thanks so much for your help,
>
> Malgosia
>
> Assistant Professor of Economics and International Affairs
> Columbia University
> SIPA
> IAB 1304, MC 3323
> 420 West 118th Street
> New York, N.Y. 10027
>
> tel: (212) 854-4311
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