Saving commands as macro variables (local and global) to make do-files shorter

[fatima ht]

Hi.

I have a few lines of commands which are repeated after each regression. They save the details of the regression for further tabulating of the results. I have a lot of regressions and in many cases the post estimate commands are exactly the same. Now I wonder if there is a way to save these lines as macro (local/global) variables and just use the name of the variables to call the commands. I know how to save the commands in a separate do-file and call the do-file in the main program, but I'd rather not to have separate do-files just for a few lines of commands.

Example:

logit .....

eststo reg`i'
estadd local ind_fe "Yes"
estadd local municip_fe "Yes"
estadd local year_fe "Yes"
estadd local ind_year_fe "No"

....

(These are the lines to be added to the footnote of the regression tables regarding the dummies and fixed effects included)

Thanks in advance,
Fatima

[Friedrich Huebler]

You can save commands in macros.

local command1 "sysuse auto, clear"
local command2 "regress mpg weight"
`command1'
`command2'

I don't see an advantage in doing this compared to storing the commands in a separate do-file that you then call with a single include command.

[William Lisowski]

This is more subtle than it appears, because the first of Fatima's commands includes a reference to the macro i and presumably there will be different values of i for each regression. The suggestion of using the include command is helpful, because unlike files called with the do command, when a file is included, it can refer to local variables that were defined in the do-file into which it is included.

Another possiblity would be to define a simple program within the do-file. For example, near the start of the do-file we define the footnote program, which will take one argument.

capture program drop footnote
program define footnote
eststo `1'
estadd local ind_fe "Yes"
estadd local municip_fe "Yes"
estadd local year_fe "Yes"
estadd local ind_year_fe "No"
end

Then further down in the do-file we call the footnote program after running the logit command.

logit .....

footnote reg`i'

For further information on Stata's program command, see the description in the Stata Programming Reference Manual.