Old grammer mac def

[Chen Samulsion]

Dear Stata users,

I have checked an old and worn user-written command, the -unitroot- produced in 1992 or even earlier. There's a piece of code that raise error. And I report the code and set trace on information below. I want to know what is mac def ? And how to bypass this error in versions that > Stata 10 ? Thank you very much.

    local rc=_rc
        quietly use `tmpfile', clear
    capture erase `tmpfile'
        mac def S_FN "`dsn'"
    error `rc'
/*    Rest of program, SRB 6/17/92    */
    local j=0
    while (`j'<=`lags') {
        local j=`j'+1
        mac def S_`j' = `tau`j''
    }

  - local rc=_rc
  - quietly use `tmpfile', clear
  = quietly use ......\Temp\ST_e28_000004.tmp, clear
  - capture erase `tmpfile'
  = capture erase ......\Temp\ST_e28_000004.tmp
  - mac def S_FN "`dsn'"
  = mac def S_FN ""
  - error `rc'
  = error 198

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

This is the old way of defining global macros, presumably before Statacorp made the distinction between local and global scopes. You can see the result of this as follows:

macro define one "one"
global define two "two"
macro list

[daniel klein]

The code and trace clearly show an unconditional

error `rc'

command. What did you expect from this if not an error? I don't see how this is related to macro define.