RE: st: Adding -nocons- to -mlbeta-

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.edu>]

At 10:38 PM 5/24/2005 +0100, Nick Cox wrote:
> The upper case N just flags minimally acceptable
> abbreviation and has no consequences for what
> it does.
I try to avoid these "no" syntaxes because they confuse me - but I believe 
the effect of capitalization is greater than that in this case.  If you have

syntax...,...nocons

then macro `cons' contains nothing or else it contains "nocons".

But if instead I say

syntax...,...Nocons

then macro `nocons' contains nothing or else it contains "nocons".

In other words, capitalization doesn't just change the minimal abbreviation 
- it changes the name of the local macro too.  Part of Clive's problem may 
be that he is referring to `nocons' when he should be referring to 
`cons'.  That is why I think he should just forget about using macros for 
now and just try to get it working.

option_descriptor_optionally_off is discussed on p. 410 of the Stata 8 
Programming Manual and also in the online help for -syntax-.


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Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
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