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st: RE: RE: Re: Separation anxiety (extreme penalty if mistype -separate- command)


From   "Nick Cox" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   st: RE: RE: Re: Separation anxiety (extreme penalty if mistype -separate- command)
Date   Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:41:22 -0000

I am glad it wasn't a -separate- problem. 

The command -separate- itself has never been abbreviatable. When it was
being written one small issue was whether the intended name leant itself
to minor spelling mistakes. ("separate" was one of those words I had to
check repeatedly in a dictionary.) The decision was that if the user
typed -sep_e_rate-, this is promptly corrected with a little message and
diversion of the command to -separate-, as some users may have
discovered. (That is, there is an undocumented -sep_e_rate- command.) (I
add the _ _ only to stop this mailer continually correcting the
misspelling.) This may still be the only instance in which Stata will
accept, and correct, incorrect spelling. An odd side-effect of this
episode is that my long-continued difficulties over the word have
disappeared. 

Nick 
[email protected]  

Feiveson, Alan H. (JSC-SK311)

Sorry about the needless anxiety - As Martin suggested, I did have an
old -sep-program lying around that dropped _all. Thanks, Martin

Martin Weiss

If that is true, it is pretty serious. So I get "unrecognized command:
sep" 
with my 10.1 Stata. Your error "invalid syntax" makes me think you have
a command that I do not have. What does -which sep- tell you?

Feiveson, Alan H. 

> Hello - More than once I have inadvertently typed something like "sep 
> var, by(cat)", when I meant to type "separate var,by(cat)" . The 
> result is an error, but far worse, Stata wipes out my whole data set 
> when I do this, or even if I simply type "sep":
>
>
> . use rad_protein_collapsed_4group_binomial.dta
>
> . des,short
>
> Contains data from rad_protein_collapsed_4group_binomial.dta
>  obs:            24
> vars:            52                          20 Nov 2008 12:42
> size:         4,464 (99.9% of memory free)
> Sorted by:  rad  time  group
>
> . sep
> invalid syntax
> r(198);
>
> . des,short
>
> Contains data
>  obs:             0
> vars:             0
> size:             0 (100.0% of memory free)
> Sorted by:
>

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