Yes, -anything- makes syntax much more flexible.
It showed up as part of the 6 December 2001 update to Stata 7. So watch
out--your program will crash if anyone with an older executable trys to
run it.
-Nick Winter
-----------------------------------------------------------
Nicholas Winter, Ph.D. P 202.939.5343
Policy Studies Associates F 202.939.5732
1718 Connecticut Avenue, NW [email protected]
Washington, DC 20009-1148 www.policystudies.com
-----------------------------------------------------------
> -----Original Message-----
> From: FEIVESON, ALAN H. (AL) (JSC-SD) (NASA)
> [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 12:39 PM
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: st: RE: RE: [programming] using -if- in do file
>
>
> Nick -
>
> I think -syntax anything- may actually achieve what I want
> inside an .ado
> file as you suggest. I was not aware of the "anything" argument. It
> apparently is not in the manual (at least I can't find it) -
> but it does
> appear in the -help-. I see a whole new vista of
> possibilities now that I
> know about this trick. Thanks for the suggestion.
>
> Al Feiveson
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Winter [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 9:54 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: RE: [programming] using -if- in do file
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: FEIVESON, ALAN H. (AL) (JSC-SD) (NASA)
> > [mailto:[email protected]]
> > Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 10:51 AM
> > To: 'statalist'
> > Subject: st: [programming] using -if- in do file
> >
> >
> > Hello - Is there a way to restrict observations over which a do-file
> > operates without using the -syntax- command? The syntax
> > command allows [if]
> > and [in] options, but is extremely picky about using numbers
> > or non existent
> > variable names in the argument list. Therefore I'd rather
> > check for the -if-
> > condition directly. I assume there must be some system macro
> > which stores
> > the -if- or -in- condition. How can I get it without using
> -syntax- ?
>
> I assume you mean to say "ado-file", not "do-file".
>
> My approach, if you want the if/in and/or options parsing
> capability of
> syntax, would be to use the "anything" argument of -syntax-, which
> allows an arbitrary set of stuff where the varlist would normally go.
>
> syntax anything [if] [in] , OPtion(string)
>
> See -help syntax-
>
> -Nick Winter
> *
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