Is there a way for a program to assign an ordinary local macro in the "parent" scope?

[Nils Enevoldsen]

Is there a way for a program to pass an ordinary local macro to the "parent" scope, or must I use a workaround like this?

program myprog, rclass
return local rmyvar "foo"
end

​myprog
local myvar `r(rmyvar)'

I call this program a bunch of times, and defining the locals over and over seems like a lot of duplication.

[Nick Cox]

Yes. It's is c_local and explained in various places. e.g. http://www.stata.com/statalist/archi.../msg00385.html

The usual arch comment is that you should use it only if you can explain how dangerous it can be as well as how useful.

[Nils Enevoldsen]

Bingo. Thanks.

AFAICT, this is functionally no more dangerous than a global, but is dangerous insofar as it subverts the meaning (and therefore the expectation of the behavior) of "local". Does that sound correct?

[Nick Cox]

Spot on.