-capture- doesn't work in Stata 17.0

[Sergiy Radyakin]

Dear All,

according to Stata's manual: "capture executes command, suppressing all its output (including error messages, if any)..."

But I can't get it why the -capture- command doesn't work in Stata 17.0. By "doesn't work" here I mean "doesn't suppress the error message in the output".

Here is what I type:

.

local foo
capture local foo `"`: dir "./bar" dirs "*"'"'
directory ./bar not found

I don't seem to find a way to prevent the error message from appearing.

My expectation is to have a blank result in foo after running these lines (note I specifically clear the local foo before running this line).

How can the error message be really suppressed?

Stata version is 17.0(170130) on Windows, if that matters.

Thank you, Sergiy

[Clyde Schechter]

FWIW, same thing happens in version 18.

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

Something strange is happening here and I can't explain it. I am guessing it's to do with Stata first trying to expand the extended function inside of the compound quotes, before it gets assigned to the local macro -foo-. Here's what I find without the wrapping compound quotes:

local foo : dir "./bar" dirs "*"  // gives error message
directory ./bar not found

capture local foo : dir "./bar" dirs "*"  // capture supresses the error message

[Sergiy Radyakin]

Dear Leonardo Guizzetti ,

thank you very much for the helpful and illustrative hint!
I can totally reduce some quotes in my expressions to use your workaround.

Clyde Schechter , thank you very much for checking in 18 and congratulations on an upgrade!

Best, Sergiy