The issue as I see it is not whether people want this.
FWIW, I prefer leading zeros myself in this interval.
The issue is that many, many Stata programs choose
particular formats for output. I am not clear how
any global setting could be very effective given
that fact. In other words, local freedom for
programmers, StataCorp or not, to set up formats
as they wish controlling their output is somewhat
at odds with the idea of a universal instruction.
That doesn't rule out trying to give users some
flexibility, as exemplified by many programmers'
work, including Ben's.
Elsewhere I have tried pushing the idea that
an array of values may require an array (not
necessarily of the same dimensions) of
formats. This is standard in some languages,
but not well supported in Stata.
Nick
[email protected]
Jann, Ben
> There has been some discussion about displaying the 0 in front
> of the decimal point for numbers in (-1,1).
>
> Seb Buechte asked:
> > is there anyway to force stata to generally display 0.5
> > instead of .5 ?
>
> Thomas J. Steichen answered:
> > My experience is that
> > g formats do not put the leading zero
> > f formats put the leading zero
>
> Thomas is right, of course. However, I think that it would
> be great to be able to choose whether to print the leading
> zero or not in general (i.e. to be able to print the zero or
> not in both the g and the f format).
>
> For example, -estout- provides the -nolz- option ("no
> leading zero") to get rid of the leading zeros in the f
> format. I think it would be great if such functionality be
> provided via -%fmt-.
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