st: Why won't my -local- work?

[Brandon Olszewski <olszewski.brandon@gmail.com>]

I want to make some tables using -contract- and -collapse- for about
thirty variables. I figured a local macro to identify that varlist
would be the best way to do it. I followed examples I've seen
elsewhere - such as http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/sscc/pubs/stata_prog1.htm
- and on Statalist but keep failing. Here is an example of my syntax:

>local mymacro var1 var2 var3

When I try and do anything with mymacro, I get no results returned.
For instance,
>sum `mymacro'
gives me sum output of all vars.
>keep `mymacro'
gives me the error "varlist or in range required". When I try
>reg outcome `mymacro'
all I get is a constant value in my reg output. I want to replace
contents of that varlist with dummies, such that
>foreach var of local mymacro {
>     replace `var'=1 if `var'!=0
>     }
But obviously, that doesn't work either, because for some reason,
nothing seems to be stored in my macro.

I am running Stata 12. Thanks for any help.

Brandon Olszewski
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