Ho hum.
My guess is that Stata is parsing your
" `" "
as
" `"
followed
by
"
and the last is unacceptable. Key here is that
you can use -char()- to inhibit treatment of
` and " and ' but that trick only works once,
i.e. when you do it. Once those characters are in the
macro the usual rules will apply when you use it
subsequently.
So, two suggestions:
1. I see no reason to do what you want as a two-step.
So don't define the locals and then use them, but
just try the trick directly. For example,
file write `handle' " `=char(96)'`=char(34)' "
2. You might need `" "' rather than " " in the above.
Nick
[email protected]
Eva Poen
> I tried to implement your solution, and it works like a charm for
> char(34), but not for a combination of char(34) and char(39) or
> char(96), for the opening and closing quotes. Since I want to have
> compound quotes printed as characters, I tried the following:
>
> local compoundopen "`=char(96)'`=char(34)'"
> local compoundclose "`=char(34)'`=char(39)'"
>
> di `" `compoundopen' `compoundclose' "'
>
> forvalues x = 1/`n' {
> file write `handle' "capture label variable `=VarName[`x']' "
> file write `handle' " `compoundopen' "
> file write `handle' " `=VarLabel[`x']' "
> file write `handle' " `compoundclose' "
> file write `handle' _n
> }
>
> I receive an "invalid syntax" error after line 2 of the loop. -set
> trace on- reveals that the code does what I want it to do - only stata
> doesn't like the syntax. Here are the relevant lines:
>
> = file write _VarLabelsFile " `" "
> invalid syntax
>
> Replacing the 39 and 96 chars by the actual characters doesn't help.
> I'd be very grateful for any ideas on how to solve this.
> 2007/8/9, n j cox <[email protected]>:
> > As I understand it you want the inner compound double
> > quotes to be printed as characters, to be interpreted
> > later as delimiters, and not to be interpreted as
> > delimiters by -file- as it reads your command line.
> >
> > I haven't tried it, but I guess that using the -char()-
> > function may provide a solution. That is, wherever you
> > would have
> >
> > "
> >
> > put
> >
> > `=char(34)'
> >
> > and so forth. -asciiplot- from SSC is one way of
> > seeing a list of (your version of) ASCII characters.
> > Royalties should be sent directly to the original authors.
> >
> > Nick
> > [email protected]
> >
> > Eva Poen
> >
> > I am currently working with a large number of data sets (Stata 9)
> > which all have a common structure and more or less the same
> variables.
> > To ensure that variables are labeled consistently across
> data sets, I
> > wrote a little program which defines these labels from information
> > stored in an Access database. Everything works fine apart from one
> > thing: I cannot have double quotes inside my variable
> labels. I tried
> > numerous ways to incorporate compound quotes, to no avail.
> >
> > The relevant code follows below. There are two variables in
> memory at
> > this point: one is called VarName; it holds all variable names for
> > which I want to have common labels. The other one is VarLabel which
> > holds the label information. The code generates a do-file
> which I can
> > then run on my data sets as required.
> >
> > *************
> > count
> > local n = r(N)
> >
> > file open VarLabelsFile using VarLabelsFile.do, write replace
> >
> > forvalues x = 1/`n' {
> > file write `handle' `"capture label variable `=VarName[`x']'
> > "`=VarLabel[`x']'" "' _n
> > }
> >
> > file close VarLabelsFile
> > *************
> >
> > My attempt was to introduce compound quotes like this:
> > -file write `handle' `"capture label variable `=VarName[`x']'
> > `"`=VarLabel[`x']'"' "' _n-
> >
> > But the resulting do-file still ends up looking like this:
> >
> > capture label variable SessionID "zTree (or other) Session ID
> > (alpha-numeric)"
> > capture label variable SID "unique Session ID (numeric)"
> > etc.
> >
> > instead of like this:
> > capture label variable SessionID `"zTree (or other) Session ID
> > (alpha-numeric)"'
> > capture label variable SID `"unique Session ID (numeric)"'
> > etc.
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