This came up on the list a while back.
Suppose you mistype the local macro reference. Say you mean to type
save `myfile', replace
but you have a minute brainstorm and you type `myfil'. Further suppose
that local macro `myfil' is not defined. Then Stata sees
save, replace
which to Stata is perfectly legal and intelligible. Stata will overwrite
the original data file, which is not what you intended at all. Of
course, typos here and there can have all sorts of consequences, all of
which are strictly your fault, but this one could be catastrophic if
what you had in memory was only a small part of the data or nothing to
do with the dataset you last read in.
There may be other reasons for not doing this, but that's one.
Nick
[email protected]
Joseph Coveney
Steven Samuels wrote (excerpted):
. . . Technical support told me that "replace" should not be used when
saving temporary files.
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This is news to me. I use -replace- all of the time with temporary
files.
What did StataCorp technical support say was the matter with using
-save . . . , replace- with temporary files?
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