st: RE: quotes in macros

["Maarten Buis" <M.Buis@fsw.vu.nl>]

Keith:
You can change the command delimiter to ; by -#delim ;-  and after the global command back to enter again with -#delim cr-. So your command would become:

#delim ;
glo list `""rather long filename one" "rather long filename two"      
        "ridiculously long filename three which takes a whole line"     
                (etc etc)               
        "' ;
#delim cr

HTH,
Maarten

-----------------------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Department of Social Research Methodology 
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 
Boelelaan 1081 
1081 HV Amsterdam 
The Netherlands

visiting adress:
Buitenveldertselaan 3 (Metropolitan), room Z434 

+31 20 5986715

http://home.fsw.vu.nl/m.buis/
-----------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu]On Behalf Of Keith Dear
Sent: dinsdag 25 juli 2006 7:16
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: st: quotes in macros

I need to create a global macro containing several filenames, each of
which contains a space. This is ok for a short list of short names:

glo list `""file one" "file two" "file three""'

but what I really want is

glo list `""rather long filename one" "rather long filename two"        ///
        "ridiculously long filename three which takes a whole line"     ///
                (etc etc)               ///
        "'

This generates a syntax error, I suppose because quoted strings can't
be split over lines.


Note that in a do-file, the following DOES work:

glo list first_filename_with_no_spaces  ///
        "after the first, quotes strings with spaces are ok"    ///
        "file three" "file four"

The problem comes only if the first name needs quoting. So a clumsy
workaround is:

glo list null "file one" ///
        etc

foreach file of any $list {
        if "`file'"=="null" continue
...
}

But who wants that?
kd

(using Stata 9.2, Win-XP)














Dr Keith B.G. Dear
Senior Fellow in Biostatistics
National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
Tel: 02 612 54865, Fax: 02 612 50740
http://nceph.anu.edu.au/Staff_Students/staff_pages/dear.php
CRICOS provider #00120C

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