Re: st: describe using (problem with abbrev )

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

Good catch by Daniel here.

The reason that varlists with dashes are not allowed is presumably
that Stata can't expand what it doesn't know about. That is, the
dataset would have to be read in before Stata could expand a variable
name range, and that's the point: the dataset is being accessed
remotely.

Nick
njcoxstata@gmail.com


On 3 December 2013 12:40, daniel klein <klein.daniel.81@gmail.com> wrote:
> Alan,
>
> this behavior is documented in -help describe-.
>
> "The varlist in the describe using syntax differs from standard Stata
> varlists in two ways. First, you cannot abbreviate variable names;
> that is, you have to type displacement rather than displ. However, you
> can use the wildcard character (~) to indicate abbreviations, for
> example, displ~. Second, you may not refer to a range of variables;
> specifying age-income is considered an error."
>
> Here is a sketch how you could allow the dash character
>
> *! version 1.0.0 03dec2013 Daniel Klein
>
> pr descdash
>  vers 11.2
>
>  syntax anything using [, * ]
>
>  m : st_local("uservars", stritrim(st_local("anything")))
>  loc uservars : subinstr loc uservars "- " "-" ,all
>  loc uservars : subinstr loc uservars " -" "-" ,all
>
>  qui d `using' ,varl
>  loc allvars `r(varlist)'
>
>  token `uservars'
>  forv j = 1/`: word count `uservars'' {
>   loc var : subinstr loc `j' "-" " " ,c(loc dsh)
>   if (`dsh') {
>    loc f : list posof "`: word 1 of `var''" in allvars
>    loc t : list posof "`: word 2 of `var''" in allvars
>    if (`t' < `f') {
>     di as err "variables out of order"
>     e 111
>    }
>    m : st_local("var", ///
>    invtokens(tokens(st_local("allvars"))[(`f'..`t')]))
>   }
>   loc varlist `varlist' `var'
>  }
>
>  d `varlist' `using' ,`options'
> end
> e
>
> descdash y1-y2 using ajit_112213
>
> Best
> Daniel
>
> --
> Hi _ In Stata 13 (and also in Stata 12), it appears that the
> abbreviation with a dash "-" does not work with -describe using
> *
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*
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