st: What's wrong with -syntax, [now]-?

[Chris Ruebeck <ruebeckc@lafayette.edu>]

This post seems trivial, but the issue did cost me some non-trivial 
debugging time.

It seems that an option named "now" won't work.  It can't be that 
option names must have more than three characters, because an option 
named "yes" works.  I used -search now- to see if it's a reserved word, 
but got no hits.  Although -findit now- is an amusing command to issue, 
it's also not surprising that too many results are returned to be 
useful for investigation of this minor annoyance.

Eureka (just as I was composing the subject for this post)!  I'll 
continue to post it anyway for the interest of the non-gurus on the 
list.  It's the fact that "now" begins with "no".  See /optionally_off/ 
in -help syntax-.

Chris


. program define junk
  1. syntax , [now]
  2. di "`now'"
  3. end

. junk, now


. program drop junk
. program define junk
  1. syntax , [blah]
  2. di "`blah'"
  3. end

. junk, blah
blah

. program drop junk
. program define junk
  1. syntax , [yes]
  2. di "`yes'"
  3. end

. junk, yes
yes

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