Cap drop using a wildcard?

[Nat Qiu]

Hi guys, does anyone notice that the "cap drop" command may use something like wildcard? i.e. "cap drop y" might drop variables starting with "y" (e.g. "yr").
It's alright when you run it as a single command. But once you use it in a do file, the wildcard effect appears.

[Nick Cox]

I can't imagine why this being in a do-file makes any difference to how it works.

Also y here isn't a wildcard. It just turns out to be the abbreviation of yr

set varabbrev off 

is what you may be seeking.

[Joro Kolev]

This example might illustrate why this is not a wild card:

. sysuse auto, clear
(1978 Automobile Data)

. keep pr

. gen pretty = price

. keep pr
pr ambiguous abbreviation
r(111);

So in the first case because there was only one variable starting with pr (price) Stata took the abbreviation and executed the command.

In the second case, because there are two variables starting with pr, Stata exists with an error message. So this is not a wild card situation.