Are there costs to setting maxvar to its maximum?

[Nils Enevoldsen]

-help memory- doesn't mention any costs associated with setting a higher maxvar. However, the default maxvar for SE and MP is not the maximum, which suggests to me that there may be costs. Is there any reason I shouldn't set it to its maximum permanently?

[Hemanshu Kumar]

I think the costs are minor for most modern machines. From the "managing memory" part of the Stata User's Guide:

Each additional 10,000 variables specified with set maxvar requires Stata to set aside roughly 1.3 megabytes of memory for variable names, not including the data stored in those variables.

[Nils Enevoldsen]

Thanks, Hemanshu. So for reference, with Stata SE, increasing from the default 5000 to the max 32767 costs 3.6 MB. I think my computer can afford that.