Re: st: -confirm variable- does not accept varlist (wildcards)

[László Sándor <sandorl@gmail.com>]

Yes, this is what I should have done.

That said, I don't see why confirm itself cannot unabbreviate if it
does take multiple variables. Wildcards are not an ambiguous
abbreviation…

On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:30 AM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> . sysuse auto, clear
> (1978 Automobile Data)
>
> . confirm var m*
> m ambiguous abbreviation
> r(111);
>
> . unab m : m*
>
> . confirm var `m'
> Nick
> njcoxstata@gmail.com
>
>
> On 5 September 2013 15:18, László Sándor <sandorl@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just a note about something that bit me hard in the last few days:
>> contrary to the help file, -confirm variable- did not take a string I
>> meant as a varlist in the form of "q_*" but produced an error that *
>> is invalid. As the typical use case is with -capture- and -if (_rc)-,
>> I did not notice that the wrong fork of my code was executed until
>> quite some time.
>>
>> To be clear, I am not sure how confirm *should* work with wildcards or
>> multiple variables anyway, I know. And it does accept abbreviations.
>> So "q_" does work, and it is even clearer about my intentions. And I
>> should have tested the code anyway. And I probably should have used
>> more specific -if (_rc==)- specifications to distinguish the variable
>> genuinely missing from other errors.
>>
>> That said, it does not feel right to be bitten by a casual "varlist"
>> specified in the documentation actually not complying with what
>> varlists are. A few weeks ago I had a similar issue with ranges of
>> variables in the keepusing() option of -merge-.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Laszlo
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