Undesirable formatting of axis labels when value labels are present

[Nils Enevoldsen]

I'm getting some behavior that I don't expect regarding the formatting of axis labels. In certain circumstances, the axis labels are pretty round numbers, and in other circumstances, they are ugly almost-round numbers that are shifted by what appears to be a floating-point amount.

pause on

clear

input x
0.5
1
end

hist x // Axis labels are pretty
pause // Enter q to continue execution

format %65.0g x
hist x // Axis labels are ugly
pause

format %9.0g x
hist x // Axis labels are pretty again
pause

label define elephant .e "Missing because an elephant sat on it and it got kind of squished"
label value x elephant // format of x becomes %65.0g automatically
hist x // Axis labels are ugly again
pause

format %9.0g x
hist x // Axis labels are ugly still
pause

label value x // Remove the value label
hist x // Axis labels are pretty again
pause

label value x elephant, nofix // nofix prevents format of x from changing
hist x // Axis labels are ugly again

pause off

1. In every case, Stata should be smart enough to figure out that the axis labels should be displayed as ".2" etc. After all, Stata is the one choosing these labels. Let's leave that to one side.
2. What is it about the presence of a value label that causes the axis label formatting to fail, even when the variable format is "correct"?
3. As a workaround, is there a way of coercing axis label formatting to work properly without dropping the value label?

[Scott Merryman]

1. But you are telling Stata to display the axis labels at %65.0g. The axis label value .55 is being displayed as .55000000000000004

. disp %65.0g .55
                                               .55000000000000004

3. You could use a format statement suboption in the xlabel() option

[Nils Enevoldsen]

1. How am I doing this? What about my code is telling the axis labels to be formatted as %65.0g? It's not the format of the variable; note that label value x elephant, nofix still messes up the labels. Also note that graph twoway scatter x x does not always format the axis labels with the same format as hist x.

3. This is a good workaround. Thanks.