breaking a command line into multiple lines in a do-file

[Navid Asgari]

Hi,

I am using /// to break long lines of Stata commands into multiple lines to improve readability of my do-files. It works in the case of command such as -twoway- (i.e. the /// turns green and breaks the line and the command is run with no problem). But, for a command like -display- it doe snot do what is it supposed to.

Any suggestion?

Thanks,
Navid

[Dick Campbell]

Please show exactly what you entered and the resulting error messages. There is no way anyone can help you without this information.

[Scott Merryman]

Use /* */ to continue the display line:

disp "Hello "     /*
    */ "World"

[Svend Juul]

display "Hello " ///
"world"

works for me (Stata 13 and 14), but /// is only valid in a do-file, not in the command window. Is that the problem?

[Sergiy Radyakin]

Splitting long strings (constants) across multiple lines has been already discussed at the forum, see here.

[ben earnhart]

You might consider using the "#delim ;" option if you find yourself using long multline commands a lot. For example,

display "hello ///
  world"

throws an error, but

  #delim ;
  
  display "hello 
  world";

works fine. The /// approach is sensitive to quotation marks, while the #delim ; approach is not.

[Navid Asgari]

This worked for me

Code:
disp "Hello " /* */ "World" Thanks a lot

[Brian Yalle]

Hi, I've just read these posts and I have the same question but using other command, below i wrote what i want to write:

keep var12 caseid v138 hw13
height weight age
job v016

Where: var12, caseid, v138, hw13, height, weight, age, job, v016 are variables which i want to keep
I will appreciate if anyone can help me. Thanks in advance

[Rich Goldstein]

see "h delimit" and "h comments" - as you will see, there are multiple ways to do this

[Brian Yalle]

Thanks a lot, in fact, I used:
#delimit ;
keep caseid sregion v024 v025 v040 v701 v705 s108n s496 v012 v131 v155 v156
v157 v158 v501 v714 v717 b9 b16 s720a v013 v190 v150 v151 v152 v208 ;
#delimit cr
and it works!