Re: st: local variable defined outside a do file

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

First, let's be clear that there is no term "local variable" in Stata.
What you are referring to is called a local macro. See also, for
example,

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2008-08/msg01258.html

In terms of your main question, you should pass the value of a local
macro to your do-file as an argument; otherwise it follows from the
definition of a local macro that the contents of that macro are quite
invisible outside the program in which it is defined.

foreach x in a b c d {
do dummy.do `x'
save, replace
}

If you do this the value of `x' is accessible within dummy.do as `1'.

What you need to read is any account of using do files with arguments.

What should be fixed in the memory is that "local" means what it says:
local macros as such are only visible locally.

Nick

On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Mayank Mishra <mayankm16@gmail.com> wrote:

> This is regarding a problem related to a local variable defined
> outside a do file. Following is the code:
>
> foreach x in a b c d {
> do dummy.do
> save, replace
> }
>
> The dummy file uses the local variable x in its calculations and as
> you can see it is defined outside the do file. The Stata gives an
> error on this.
> So, please tell me what can be done in this case.
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