st: re: saved local macro

[Kit Baum <baum@bc.edu>]

< >
Martin is correct in suggesting that you should return a scalar. But  
if you work with macros, note that macros are _always_ strings. They  
may contain nothing but numbers, and Stata is smart enough to evaluate  
them as numbers in context:

program cu7, rclass
local numd 1
return local numd =`numd'
end

cu7
local foo = `r(numd)' + 1
di "`foo'"

If you display r(numd), you get "1", which is the value to which  
r(numd) is aliased. If you speak of it as `r(numd)', you are  
explicitly directing Stata to replace r(numd) in the -local- command  
with its value, and then execute the command. That works fine.


Kit Baum, Boston College Economics and DIW Berlin
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata:
http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html


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