Empty line in output of describe command

[Sergiy Radyakin]

An empty line occurs in the output of the Stata's describe command, as can be seen from this example:

clear all
generate byte urbanrural=1
label define urbanrural 0 "Rural" 1 "Urban"
label values urbanrural urbanrural
generate x=1
describe

results in:

Contains data
 Observations:             0                  
    Variables:             2                  
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Variable      Storage   Display    Value
    name         type    format    label      Variable label
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
urbanrural      byte    %8.0g      urbanrural
                                              
x               float   %9.0g                 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by: 
     Note: Dataset has changed since last saved.

This is not a big deal, but rather counterintuitive and made me wonder a couple of times if a variable was somehow 'suppressed' in the output (similar to how it is done in the [weird] output of graph query ).

(Stata 17.0/Windows)

Thank you, Sergiy

[William Lisowski]

It seems to happen when the length of the name of the value label exceeds 8 characters, because a separate line is needed if there is a variable label. Since it is not needed in the absence of a variable label, I would class this as an unintended feature.

 clear all

. generate byte urbanrural=1

. label values urbanrural u23456789

. generate x=1

. describe

Contains data
 Observations:             0                  
    Variables:             2                  
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Variable      Storage   Display    Value
    name         type    format    label      Variable label
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
urbanrural      byte    %8.0g      u23456789
                                              
x               float   %9.0g                 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by: 
     Note: Dataset has changed since last saved.

. label variable urbanrural "whatever"

. describe

Contains data
 Observations:             0                  
    Variables:             2                  
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Variable      Storage   Display    Value
    name         type    format    label      Variable label
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
urbanrural      byte    %8.0g      u23456789
                                              whatever
x               float   %9.0g                 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by: 
     Note: Dataset has changed since last saved.

.