Re: st: error message "label xxx already defined"

[Richard Goldstein <richgold@ix.netcom.com>]

you are mis-reading the message from Stata; it is telling you that a
label, not a variable, is already defined; in other words, each of the
two files has a label with same name; just check that they are defined
to be the same in the two files; if they are the same, then you can
ignore the warning, not error, message

Rich

On 7/10/12 1:03 PM, xueliansharon wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I try to merge two files and always get an error message as "label xxx
> already defined". What's more strange is that when I check the master and
> using data file, I don't have the variable "xxx". Does anybody know the
> reason for this?
> 
> For your information, here are the commands and results:
> 
> command:
> 
> use "D:\work\aa.dta", clear
> sort personid
> merge 1:1 personid using "D:\work\bb.dta"
> 
> result:
> (label xxx already defined)
> 
> command:
> tab xxx
> 
> result:
> variable xxx not found
> 
> Thank you very much for your time!
> 
> Best,
> Xuelian
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