Dear Dirk,
> > - variable names and labels containing a German "umlaut" (�,
> > �, �, �, �,
> > �, �) are not possible in Stata (really?)
>
> Others can comment better than I can.
So can I.
Indeed, Stata is unable to use Umlauts (and also French letters with accents
and Spanish ones with tildes, hats and stuff on it) correctly - it prints
question marks instead. So if you want to use those outputs or graphs
directly you should convert the umlauts in the specified way.
However, Stata does not produce errors if you use umlauts in comments or
even variable or value labels or variable names, so it's completely legal to
use them.
But I would strongly recommend not using umlauts in variable names. (I did
not even know that it's okay to do until I tried it now) Just try my example
to get the point:
generate t�st=1
generate t�st=3
describe t?st
doing so, two variables appear in the output, both with question marks where
originally have been the umlauts. So it's quite hard to distinguish between
them. (Anyway you get the right content by typing e.g. tab t�st or tab t�st)
Again the output topic: If you export the output (text output - I did not
ever try it with graphs) to any other program (such as MS Word or Excel -
hope I do not get off topic mentioning that :-), the umlauts appear in the
right way.
CU
Christian
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