Michael,
I apologize. Owing to the vagaries of computer timing, Michael's message
below arrived after his other message. In the message below Michael
re-states that he is not calling for the removal of -delimit-. So, I only
want to apologize for misunderstanding and attributing a view to Michael
he did not have. Looks like we agree.
Cheers,
Sam
On Sat, 2 Sep 2006, Michael S. Hanson wrote:
> �.
>
> On Sep 1, 2006, at 5:07 PM, SamL wrote:
>
> > Please don't do follow Mike's advice. Elegant though it may be to
> > retire
> > -delimit-, several factors necessitate maintaining the command. I'll
> > mention only two.
>
> [snip]
>
> > One need not use delimit if one does not want to do so. But retiring
> > the
> > command? That seems unwarranted.
> >
> > On Fri, 1 Sep 2006, Michael S. Hanson wrote:
> >
> >> At best, I would suggest, it is a relic of times gone by, and should
> >> be depreciated in favor of ///.
>
> Sam (and others):
>
> Notice I never suggested that the -delimit- command be eliminated.
> It obviously would be undesirable for legacy code. As noted above, I
> suggested it should be depreciated. Type -help fit- for one example
> of depreciated code.
>
> You could still use -fit- to estimate a linear regression -- indeed, I
> have a colleague who uses it frequently -- but it is depreciated:
> there are no examples of -fit- in the manuals (that I could find), and
> it is not recommended (or even mentioned) to most users. Due to the
> occasional unusual behavior of -delimit- (evidenced both by the
> exchange earlier in this thread and my own experience teaching Stata in
> my courses), I would suggest that it too be depreciated.
> Substantively, I would like to encourage those who provide code for
> learning Stata (manuals, on-line resources, etc.) eschew the use of
> -delimit- and * comments, and adopt the more modern use of // comments
> and /// line continuations.
>
> Obviously, individual users are free to use whatever conventions they
> prefer -- just as people can still use -fit- if they choose. But when
> there exist alternatives that are better for most users, IMO those
> should be promoted.
>
> -- Mike
>
>
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