Martin Weiss <[email protected]> writes,
> "-_request()- will store the result in a local macro if you prefix its
> name with an underscore"
>
> [...] Is it not highly unusual that the user has to supply the underscore
> for the -local-? (I cannot think of another command that requires this
> treatment). This fact could be given more prominence in the manual entry, as
> normally Stata would prepend the underscore for you, as is obvious from:
Martin is right, I don't think there's another place in Stata where the
prepending the underscore is required to create or access a local macro.
Rather than fix the manual to emphasize it, however, I think it would be
better to improve the syntax of -_request()-.
Doing that now appears on a to-do list, but rather low on it.
The _ in front of local macros is a remnant of Stata's history. At one
time, _macros were local macros, and macros without underscores were
global. In the internal code, Stata still works to make that statement
true, but the internal logic is not organized like that anymore. The
statement is kept in force, however, to ensure that programs written
for Stata 1.0, 2.0, etc., continue to work.
-- Bill
[email protected]
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
