tabout error - conformability error, function returned error

[Greg Saldutte]

Hello,

I am attempting to include multiple variables in a oneway table. I am using the tabout command from ssc by Ian Watson. Here is my code:

sysuse auto, clear
tabout make price mpg using table.tex, cells(n) sum oneway replace

I am getting the following errors:

subinstr(): 3200 conformability error
sum_output(): - function returned error
<istmt>: - function returned error


The help file specifies that the sum and oneway commands may be necessary when making oneway tables, so I'm not sure why I'm getting these errors. Any ideas are appreciated.

[William Lisowski]

You have a syntax error, but tabout doesn't check for the error and thus you wind up with uninformative error messages. Consider

. tabout foreign using table.txt, cells(n) sum oneway replace
              subinstr():  3200  conformability error
            sum_output():     -  function returned error
                 <istmt>:     -  function returned error
r(3200);

which reproduces your error. The output of help tabout tells us that N, like any other statistic in the cells option, must be followed by a variable name - it is going to report the number of non-missing observations of that variable. So we try

. tabout foreign using table.txt, cells(n foreign) sum oneway replace

Table output written to: table.txt

Car type        N
        foreign
Domestic        
Foreign 
Total

which while not failing with an outright error, fails to produce the desired output. A return to the output of help tabout reminds us that the staitstic in "N" rather than "n". And we then have

. tabout foreign using table.txt, cells(N foreign) sum oneway replace

Table output written to: table.txt

Car type        N
        foreign
Domestic        52.0
Foreign 22.0
Total   74.0