Re: st: passing indefinite no of arguments

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

No, sorry, that was quite wrong in part.

Local macro 0 _is_ defined automatically as all the arguments to a
do-file. However, in this case the two lines

syntax anything
tokenize `anything'

don't do anything that can't be done in terms of macros `1' `2' `3' `4' up.

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tashi:
>
> It is best to think that you are addressing Statalist, not any one person.
>
> Evidently you have a do-file -file.do- but where it starts and ends is
> not clear from your code fragments below.
>
> Evidently you are using -syntax- in a do-file which is not illegal but
> it is unusual. You need to understand that -syntax- looks inside the
> local macro 0, which apparently you never define. In a program,
> defined by code following a -program- statement, that is done
> automatically. However, `1' `2' etc. are defined in a do-file so your
> misunderstanding does not bite you. That is, the two lines
>
> syntax anything
> tokenize `anything'
>
> do absolutely nothing but that does not invalidate your problem. On
> the other hand,
>
> foreach x of  varlist1 id* {
>
> is illegal. You are confusing two quite different syntaxes: examples are.
>
> foreach x of local varlist1 {
>
> foreach x of varlist id* {
>
> As I have tried to signal before, I advise against trying to write
> your own ranking code when Stata (and Mata) provide tools for sorting
> and ranking and there are existing programs to be exploited.
>
> Nick
>
> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 4:52 PM, tashi lama <ltashi32@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello Nick,
>>
>>       Could you pls look into my code below and tell me where is that I screwed although I feel like the code should work fine, at least in principle. Here is the dataset and the problem is of ranking ignoring few variables.
>>
>
>> date           hits1     hits2     hits3      hits4   hits5
>>
>> 01jan2010       3          2        5          1          5
>>
>> 02jan2010       5          7        8          4          2
>>
>> 03jan2010       8          6        2          1          6
>>
>> 04jan2010       6          5        3          2          7
>>
>> 05jan2010       6          4        2          6          7
>>
>> 06jan2010       1          5        3          7          8
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> if "`2'"=="rank"  {
>>
>>                    syntax anything                        /*allowing any data type to be passed. `3' and `4' are start_date and end_date
>>                    tokenize `anything'
>>                    local para "`1'" "`2'" "`3'" "`4'"      /* breaking arguments into 2 macros `para' and `deselected' and putting first 4 arguments into `para' and rest into `deselcted'.
>>                    macro shift 4
>>                    local deselected "`*'"
>>                       unab all : hits*
>>                       local varlist1 : list all - deselected                 /ignore variables from the list
>>                       di "` varlist1'"                            /displays the variables after ignoring. Works until this point.
>>
>>                     rename hits* id_*                                     /changing hits1 into id_1 and so on....
>>                     collapse (sum) id* if tin(`3',`4')                       /summing providing date range
>>                     local counter 1
>>                      foreach x of  varlist1 id* {                              /comparing and ranking
>>                          if `x'!=id_`1' & `x'>id_`1' {
>>                                            local  ++counter
>>                                                      }
>>                                                 }
>>                           list
>>                           di "There are `count' firms in total and I rank `counter' "
>>                     exit
>>                      }
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Questions:
>>
>> 1. When I ran
>>
>>         do file 1 rank 01jan2010 02jan2010 hits3 hits4, there is an error which reads invalid syntax. I am not sure where I screwed.
>>
>>
>>
>> 2. I supplied date range(01jan2010-02jan2010) for collapse sum, but it sums for all the dates (01jan2010-06jan2010). Any idea?
>>
>> 3. when I change the for loop as       foreach x of local varlist1  and run it, I get hits1 not found. So, it is still taking hits1 as the first variable in the varlist1. But I thougnt everything in varlist1 starts with id_ since I renamed them. Could you pls explain?
>>
>>
>>
>>  Thank you very much and I really appreciate your time...
>>

*
*   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/