Re: st: cycling paired t test (and signed rank sum test)

[n j cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

Diego uses double quotes " " in defining his arrays.
As mentioned recently, in
<http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2007-10/msg00307.html>,
" " are not cosmetic but bind tighter than spaces separate.

Thus to Stata, "a1 b1 c1" is all _one_ word, or token. Thus, first time
around the loop, Diego is trying to execute

ttest a1 b1 c1 = a2 b2 c2

which is illegal.

The semi-colons don't perform any distinctive function
here, and, unless Diego is using Stata 6 or earlier, he is
better off with -forval-. So, Diego's code could be rewritten as

local array1 a1 b1 c1
local array2 a2 b2 c2
local n : word count `array1'
forval i = 1/`n' {
	local var1 : word ‘i' of ‘array1'
	local var2 : word ‘i' of ‘array2'
	ttest `var1' = `var2'
}

Nick
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk

Diego Bellavia

[...] I tried to implement arrays, and I ended up with something like

#delimit ;

local array1 "a1 b1 c1";
local array2 "a2 b2 c2";

local i = 1 ;

local n : word count `array1' ;

while `i' <= `n'  {;

 local var1 : word ‘i' of ‘array1';
 local var2 : word ‘i' of ‘array2';

 ttest `var1' = `var2';

local i = `i' + 1;

 };

#delimit cr


but when i run it I get an "invalid syntax" error...I cannot understand 
why.


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