st: 2 questions on function wordcount

["Impavido, Gregorio" <GImpavido@imf.org>]

Dear all,

The following two examples should give the same result but they don't.

/*-------begin 1 ---------*/
unab vlist : *
di wordcount(`"`vlist'"')
/*-------end 1 ---------*/

/*-------begin 2 ---------*/
unab vlist : *
local i 0
foreach var of local vlist {
	local i = `i' + 1
}
di `i'
/*-------end 2 ---------*/

In my case, wordcount gives me a different result depending on how I rename the variables in the dataset while the second gives me always 170 (which happens to be the number of variables in the dataset.

Question 1. Is this related to the length limitation of the local macro? But if Yes, why is the macro vlist not truncated?

Question 2. Is there a quicker way to do display the last word in vlist (i.e., -di word((`"`vlist'"',wordcount(`"`vlist'"'))-) than using example 2 above to extract the number of the last variable?

Thank you in advance for your help
Gregorio

*
*   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/