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Re: st: unexpected behavior with "merge, uniqusing"


From   [email protected] (Shannon Driver, StataCorp)
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: unexpected behavior with "merge, uniqusing"
Date   Wed, 08 Feb 2006 11:37:04 -0600

Danielle H. Ferry <[email protected]> wrote

> When I attempt to merge 2 data files, specifying uniqusing, I get the
> following error message:

> . merge year month using `tf_natl', uniqu;
> variables year month do not uniquely identify observations in the master data
> r(459);

> Isn't the point of the uniqusing option to require that the "using" data be
> unique, NOT the "master" data? (Both data files are sorted on the merge vars).
> Am I misunderstanding something?

The problem here is with conflicting legal abbreviations.  "uniqu" is a valid
abbreviation for "unique" and "uniqusing".  The code intended to do what the
documentation stated was valid, but the documentation was wrong.

By specifying "uniqu", Stata assumes you specified "unique", therefore it
verifies that the match variables uniquely identify observations in both the
master and the using data.

The legal minimum abbreviation for "uniqusing" should be "uniqus".  This will
be fixed in the next ado-file update and corrected in our documentation.

--Shannon Driver
  [email protected]
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