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| From | Jorge Eduardo Pérez Pérez <perez.jorge@ur.edu.co> |
| To | "statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu" <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu> |
| Subject | Re: st: A more informative error mesage in -reshape- |
| Date | Thu, 13 Oct 2011 22:00:29 -0400 |
A fix that comes to my mind is to store each processed stub in a list of processed stubs at the end of processing it, and then, before processing the next stub, checking if it is stored in the list, and issue a "stub already processed" error message if the stub is already in the list. Probably this is easier said than done. ______________________ Jorge Eduardo Pérez Pérez On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 6:58 PM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote: > Everyone who has got an uninformative error message will sympathise, > but in this case I think it's important to see why this one arises. > > First, -reshape- is here processing stubnames -- not variable names as > Jorge loosely states. > > Second, -reshape- is just processing token by token. It doesn't have a > sense of what comes next, or even that there's another stubname next > in line, as there need not be. That's a good design, indeed more or > less an inevitable design, for -reshape-'s multiple syntax. > > So, I doubt that there is a short fix to meet Jorge's suggestion. > Naturally, this is StataCorp's decision to make. > > Nick > > 2011/10/13 Jorge Eduardo Pérez Pérez <perez.jorge@ur.edu.co>: >> Dear Statalist >> >> Reshaping a lot of variables, I noticed that if by mistake, you repeat >> one of the variables you want to reshape, Stata issues a >> noninformative variable not found error message. >> >> . webuse reshape4 >> . des incf >> >> storage display value >> variable name type format label variable label >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> incf float %9.0g f inc >> >> . reshape long inc inc, i(id) j(sex) string >> (note: j = f m) >> variable incf not found >> >> I think this should be changed to "inc already reshaped" or something >> similar. When you are reshaping many variables or using varlists, the >> mistake might be hard to notice. >> > > * > * 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/ > > > * * 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/