Auto complete command

[Khoa Nguyen]

Hello all,

I'm a newbie of Stata and I would like to know whether Stata supports auto complete command mode or not? I tried searching before asking but unfortunately, I don't find the answer for this issue.
To make clear my question, I give an example as below.

Ex: On command window, in case I want to type "xtreg" but when I only type "xtr", is there any way to autocomplete this command from Stata? (Could we press Ctrl+Tab or something like that and Stata give us some choices?)

Thanks for your help so much.

Best Regards,
Khoa Nguyen

[Roberto Ferrer]

You can use TAB to complete variable names, if not ambiguous.

[Khoa Nguyen]

Thanks Roberto for your quick reply. So about the command, could we use TAB also? For example, when I type "xtre" and TAB => xtreg.

[Roberto Ferrer]

If there's a way, I don't know about it.

[Sergiy Radyakin]

No, there is no intellisense in Stata, if this is what you wish for.
If a command can be guessed from an abbreviated form, there is also a chance you can keep it in the abbreviated form, for example

gen x=1

where gen is a short form for generate.

Stata's editor is not user-extensible, so users can't contribute into enriching it's features. Other editors, especially with custom programmable syntax highlighting can be customized to support something like this.

Best, Sergiy Radyakin

[Khoa Nguyen]

Hi all,

Thank you for your information so much.

Best Regards,
Khoa Nguyen

[Charlie Joyez]

As far as I know there is no autocomplete command.
However if you're a fan of shortcuts, the minimal letters to call a command (or an option) are detailed in help files (underlined characters).
example for the generate , g varname=exp is enough instead of generate varname=exp ; (or su x1,de for summarize x1, details)

However, the xtreg command doesn't indicate any abbreviation.

[glenn_magerman]

You might want to take a look at programs like TextExpander. It's an OS-wide tool for inserting (even large chunks) of text. It works in all programs, including Stata do-files, LaTeX etc. It also accepts macros (e.g. like in OSX %B %e, %Y for date format). I used it initially as a speed up for emails, word docs, agenda etc. but you can simply generate custom templates for e.g. histograms using a simple command like ;hist.