Tempfile error

[Neg Kha]

Hi,

I have the following code:

cd "P:\2021\189\Preliminary"

use "P:\2021\189\use\A3_mergedCW_withF.dta", clear
    rename     B_sign1    CWid
    keep     CWid year kontor_handel d25
    tempfile A4
    save `A4'

But I get the following error:
invalid 'Files'
r(198);

does anyone know what is wrong?

[Jared Greathouse]

No. Is this the exact output Stata shows after the last line? Your syntax looks perfectly legal, and correct too, so I'm not sure why it would say this

[Nick Cox]

Try

save "`A4'"

as I suspect that your filepath contains one or more spaces. See

help filename

for this advice.

[Jared Greathouse]

Yeah but... the cwd doesn't have any spaces in it, no? I agree with the quotes being a solution (the one I'd use most likely), but I don't see why the problem happens just based off the MWE

[Nick Cox]

Yeah but

It's common, in my experience standard, that Stata uses a temporary directory that is not the pwd. Indeed that is evident, or at least apparent, here, because Files is not part of the current directory name.

The current directory for temporary files is recorded in c(tmpdir) How you might change that eludes me at present.

[daniel klein]

How you might change that eludes me at present.

See FAQ: Using the STATATMP environment variable

[Nick Cox]

daniel klein Indeed. Thanks!

[Neg Kha]

Try

save "`A4'"

as I suspect that your filepath contains one or more spaces. See

help filename

for this advice.

The "`A4'" fixed my problem, thanks! It is very strange since the same dofile with the same code ran perfectly before, without the quotation marks.