Nick,
thank you very much for this very helpful and comprehensive
explanation. I have a question/comment on the last paragraph:
2008/10/9 Nick Cox <[email protected]>:
> But there's a larger lesson. * and _all within programs (and also
> interactively) will include, necessarily, any temporary variables that
> exist. So, looping across varlists defined by such wildcards is a source
> of bugs. Arguably, they are yours, not Stata's.
It certainly is consequential that * and _all comprise all variables,
including existing temporary variables. However, as a user I would
expect * and _all to consist only of those variables that existed at
the time I issued the command (since these are the only variables I
know about; I have little control over what is done internally by
command -x-). Anything but this behaviour would vastly reduce the
usefulness of * and _all, IMHO.
What is the status quo on this? Many Stata commands generate temporary
variables; therefore this might be a comprehensive issue for those
users making use of * and _all shorthands.
Thanks,
Eva
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