At 04:35 PM 7/26/2005 -0700, NEYMOTIN, FLORENCE wrote:
Hi, I have some technical questions about writing .ado files for
semi-commercial stuff: (1) how do you make sure that the names you are
giving the .ado files don't conflict with other people's program
names? Is there some kind of standard?
I asked that myself a while back, and the answer seems to be that you can
never be 100% safe. I would suggest -findit progname- to see if there are
any known uses of the name. Even if there aren't that doesn't mean that
somebody else isn't using the name or couldn't try to use the name in the
future. I would suggest getting your program on ssc, as that is the most
widely used site for Stata files, and hence may make your claim on the name
the strongest.
If by semi-commercial you mean you are going to sell your programs rather
than make them publicly available, then you can see whether the name is
currently in use, but your file names won't show up on a -findit-,
increasing the likelihood that somebody else may try to use those names in
the future.
If you are really worried about it, you might just want to use weird names
no one else would ever think of - especially for any supplemental ado files
that aren't used directly by users but which get called by other programs.
-------------------------------------------
Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
OFFICE: (574)631-6668, (574)631-6463
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HOME: (574)289-5227
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WWW (personal): http://www.nd.edu/~rwilliam
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