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st: Making a case for case


From   "David Elliott" <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   st: Making a case for case
Date   Tue, 6 Feb 2007 11:42:27 -0400

Looking over a recent adofile (designed to extract dates from free
text data entry) I wrote I looked at one section of code with a:

	if strlen(trim("`exp'"))<6 {  // Too short text field
		local error 1
		local type "unkn"
		}
		else { //#1 (counter for number of close braces needed)

...a lot of additional code...

	// 2digit year leading separated
	if regexm("`exp'","([0-9][0-9])[-,./\ ]+([0-9][0-9]?)[-,./\
]+([0-9][0-9]?)")  {
		local type y2/m/d
		local order 20ymd
		local error 7
		}
	else { //#8
	// 0 to O substitution
	if regexm("`exp'","[O]") {
		local error 2
		}
	else { //#9
		// Nothing matched
		local error 3
		}
		}
		}
		}
		}
		}
		}
		}
		} // close all 9 elses

I actually numbered all my open braces because I knew it was going to
be a pain to keep track of them and get them properly closed.  (Using
a text editor with brace/parenthesis matching is a real boon to
avoiding mistakes.)

My real point in posting this code is that this whole exercise in
keeping track of my multiply nested elses would have been a lot
simpler if Stata had the equivalent of a -do case- command as a number
of other languages do.  The -do case- construct continues until a case
has been satisfied which then passes program execution to the point
following the close of the case block. Instead of:

if #1 {
	something
	}
	else {
		if #2 {
			something else
			}
				else {...

one could use something in the form:

docase {
	case #1 {
		something
		}
	case #2 {
		something else
		}
	otherwise {
		and something else again
		}
} //end case

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has had occasion to long for
such a construct within Stata to handle the gnarly mess that occurs
when one must handle a large number of nested else- ifs.  The
immediate benefit would be more readable code.  I understand from
working with Foxpro that the do case construct is faster to execute
than multiple ifs, so there may be a potential for performance
improvements as well, especially if this occurs within a loop.

--
David Elliott
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