Comparsion of commands

[Olivia Emma]

HI can any one please let me know what is the difference between these two set of commands please


cap gen urban = v025
cap la var urban "type of place of residence"


and

gen urban = v025
la var urban "type of place of residence"


when I use the cap will it generate the variable or not please

Thanks

[daniel klein]

See

help capture

In most situations, you want the latter two commands, omitting the capture prefix.

[Olivia Emma]

Thanks

if I use the commands will it make any difference please

[daniel klein]

Depends. If there is a problem, e.g., variable urban already exists or variable v025 does not exist or there are too many variables, then yes. With capture, you will not get an error message and the code that follows, if any, will execute. Without capture, Stata will issue an error message and stop execution (unless these lines are in a do-file and that do-file is called with option nostop).

[Maarten Buis]

In short, if you don't know what capture does, then don't use it. There are specialized situations where it can be convenient, but it is also dangerous as you don't notice when an error occurs. So again, unless you are very very very sure about what you are doing, just don't use it.

Or another way of saying this: if you get different results when you use capture, then my default assumption will be that the code without using capture is the correct one. If it makes no difference, than it makes no difference. If it does make a difference, trust the code without capture. So code that uses capture is typically a waste of your time. As I said above, there are exceptions, but you really need to know what you are doing. Since you asked this question, you don't, so just don't use capture.