tabout

[Yousef Daoud]

I am trying to use tabout in a do file, tabout tgrade q18 if female==0 using t1, sum
and I get invalid syntax

I have used this before and it used to work

[William Lisowski]

Welcome to Statalist.

The uninformative "invalid syntax" message, on examination, was caused by tabout overlooking the syntax error you apparently have, and then as a consequence making a syntax error of its own when calling a subcommand, which then threw the invalid syntax error causing tabout to quit. In my opinion, this is not appropriately robust code.

I am not a knowledgeable user of tabout, but it appears to me that you need to accompany your sum option with a cells option.

. sysuse auto, clear
(1978 Automobile Data)

. tabout rep78 foreign using t1, replace

Table output written to: t1

        Car type                
Repair Record 1978      Domestic        Foreign Total
        No.     No.     No.
1       2.0     0.0     2.0
2       8.0     0.0     8.0
3       27.0    3.0     30.0
4       9.0     9.0     18.0
5       2.0     9.0     11.0
Total   48.0    21.0    69.0

. tabout rep78 foreign using t2, replace sum
invalid syntax
r(198);

. tabout rep78 foreign using t3, replace sum cells(N mpg)

Table output written to: t3

        Car type                
Repair Record 1978      Domestic        Foreign Total
        N mpg   N mpg   N mpg
1       2.0     0.0     2.0
2       8.0     0.0     8.0
3       27.0    3.0     30.0
4       9.0     9.0     18.0
5       2.0     9.0     11.0
Total   48.0    21.0    69.0

[Attaullah Shah]

You can also use asdoc for tabulation of variables. asdoc can be downloaded from SSC. See the example used by William Lisoski

ssc install asdoc
sysuse auto
asdoc tab rep78 foreign

https://fintechprofessor.com/2018/01/31/asdoc/
To find out more on asdoc, read this short blog entry