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Re: st: comment out a number of lines together


From   Nick Winter <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: comment out a number of lines together
Date   Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:46:29 -0400

Hi,

No one has mentioned--unless I missed it--that multiple lines of code can be commented out with /* and */. So in this code

a
b
/*
c
d
e
f
*/
g
h


lines c,d, e and f will all be skipped.

-Nick Winter


Sergiy Radyakin wrote:

Nick,

local c //
will not work in the program because "//" is interpreted as the start
of the comment
it works in the command line though, because "//"-style comments are
prohibited in the command line input. To fix this:
1) open quotes before // like so: local c "//" , or
2) write it down as an expression, e.g. local c="/"+"/"
In any case, Stata fails to recognize "//" as a comment when it comes
as a result of macro expansion. But it works for a star ("*").

// --- begin of file testc.do ---
local c //
display `"`c'"'
local c ="/"+"/"
display `"`c'"'
local c "//"
display `"`c'"'
local c "*"
display `"`c'"'
 `c' just nothing
local c "//"
 `c' just nothing
// --- end of file testc.do ---

If writing out debugging messages, it may be more comfortable to use
di_g. See: help di_g.

Best regards, Sergiy Radyakin



On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 11:28 AM, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
Another is to prefix lines by e.g.

`c'

Setting

local c *

or

local c //

comments out those lines.

Setting

local c

zaps the macro.

Naturally any definition of the local as "*" or "//" must precede all uses
that require that interpretation.

The converse does not apply: if the local is not defined, Stata sees the
line.

More generally, you can define or undefine the macro at will.

I don't especially recommend this method, but it is an alternative that is
sometimes useful, and it matches practices in many programming languages.

Nick
[email protected]


Maarten buis wrote:
--- Paul O'Brien <[email protected]> wrote:

at times i need to comment out a number of lines, usually with * and
remove the * later to activate the commands.
is there a simple way to remove and add the * to a number of line at one
go?
One way to comment out a block of code is to surround them with /* and
*/ this way you have to remove only these two.
*
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--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Winter                                 434.924.6994 t
Assistant Professor                             434.924.3359 f
Department of Politics                  [email protected] e
University of Virginia          faculty.virginia.edu/nwinter w
PO Box 400787, 100 Cabell Hall
Charlottesville, VA 22904

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