help varlist

[Stefan Kreisel]

Greetings. Don't know how to better name this query ...

The help entry gives us some indication of how to address variables, including list of variables as in myvar1-myvar6. Now it does note there, that that only "probably" expands to myvar1, myvar2, ..., myvar6.

Here's the query. When having a humongous list of variables that one wants to e.g.

egen _grandtotal = rowtotal(myvar1-myvar323 myvar4039 myvar5000-5032)

that don't work, promting a type mismatch r(109) error; but

egen _grandtotal = rowtotal(myvar*)

does (so commands such as egen aren't completely agnostic in respect to naming conventions/possibilities).

So I wouldn't be very fond of having to write out all those variables ... Anyone out there that knows one of "those" secret workarounds? Doing it per foreach would just be too simple ;-)

Cheers!

[Stefan Kreisel]

Whoops! That goes to show that writing Statalist queries is faster than checking ones own code. As always Stata works meticulously - the type mismatch r(109) error came from a lone string variable that had been left behind between myvar1 and myvar323.
Anyways ...

[Nick Cox]

That sounds like an error, but in addition

 
 myvar5000-5032

should have been

  
 myvar5000-myvar5032