Stata unable to recognize command

[Irwinder Kaur Chhabra]

When i request for help using the help command, (example help esize) an error command comes out as :

. help esize
command whelp is unrecognized
r(199);

The alphabet w keeps appearing infront of every help command.
is this a problem with stata or could it be my Windows? Has anyone experienced this before ?

[Maarten Buis]

That is strange, for a number of reasons: the obvious problem is the addition of w. But even if the letter w is added to help, whelp is still a recognized command. In the old days (Stata 8 or less, the results of a help file were by default displayed in the output rather than in a separate window. whelp told Stata to display it in a separate window, as is what we are used to now. The command still exists, though it is less useful now, as displaying the helpfile in a separate window is already the default for help.

[Marcos Almeida]

I wonder what Stata version you’re using. Is it an older version?

[Irwinder Kaur Chhabra]

That is strange, for a number of reasons: the obvious problem is the addition of w. But even if the letter w is added to help, whelp is still a recognized command. In the old days (Stata 8 or less, the results of a help file were by default displayed in the output rather than in a separate window. whelp told Stata to display it in a separate window, as is what we are used to now. The command still exists, though it is less useful now, as displaying the helpfile in a separate window is already the default for help.

This is interesting to know!

[Irwinder Kaur Chhabra]

I wonder what Stata version you’re using. Is it an older version?

I am currently using Stata V14.

[William Lisowski]

On a fully updated copy of Stata 14, I see the following.

. which help
/Applications/Stata/ado/base/h/help.ado
*! version 1.0.0  03jan2005

. which whelp
/Applications/Stata/ado/base/w/whelp.ado
*! version 1.0.7  06sep2012

and when I look at the source code for help I see that it merely calls either whelp or chelp.

I suspect that whelp.ado is missing from the installation. Try the same two which commands I used and post the results.

[Irwinder Kaur Chhabra]

Thank you William!