Printing rendered SMCL file in Console Stata

[Michael Stepner]

Hello,

Does anyone know of a good way to render and print a specified SMCL file located on the disk, while using Console Stata? I'll give a trivial and easily reproducible test case here, but my goal in asking this question is to solve a bug report with my program -maptile-.

In a Stata GUI window, one can open a rendered view of a SMCL file using the -view- command. For example:

log using test.smcl
sysuse auto
reg price mpg
log off
view test.smcl

If you try the exact same thing in Console Stata, you get the following error:

. view test.smcl
the -view- command is not available under Stata(console)
r(199);

I've given this issue some thought, and the help files that are distributed with Stata ado-files are simply SMCL markup stored with a .sthlp file extension instead of a .smcl file extension. If one runs -help regress- in a Stata GUI window, the help file is rendered in a viewer. If one runs -help regress- in a Stata Console window, the help file is rendered and printed to the console.

I inspected help.ado, and unfortunately the -chelp- command that does the rendering for Console Stata is a built-in command. So I can't point -chelp- to a .smcl file, nor can I view and adapt the -chelp- code.

Any advice and guidance is appreciated!

[wbuchanan]

You could use the type command instead of view:

. log using test.smcl

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      name:  <unnamed>

       log:  /Users/billy/Desktop/Programs/test.smcl

  log type:  smcl

 opened on:  20 Aug 2016, 11:27:58




. sysuse auto.dta, clear

(1978 Automobile Data)




. reg price mpg




      Source |       SS           df       MS      Number of obs   =        74

-------------+----------------------------------   F(1, 72)        =     20.26

       Model |   139449474         1   139449474   Prob > F        =    0.0000

    Residual |   495615923        72  6883554.48   R-squared       =    0.2196

-------------+----------------------------------   Adj R-squared   =    0.2087

       Total |   635065396        73  8699525.97   Root MSE        =    2623.7




------------------------------------------------------------------------------

       price |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

         mpg |  -238.8943   53.07669    -4.50   0.000    -344.7008   -133.0879

       _cons |   11253.06   1170.813     9.61   0.000     8919.088    13587.03

------------------------------------------------------------------------------




. log off  

      name:  <unnamed>

       log:  /Users/billy/Desktop/Programs/test.smcl

  log type:  smcl

 paused on:  20 Aug 2016, 11:28:13

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------




. type "test.smcl"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      name:  <unnamed>

       log:  /Users/billy/Desktop/Programs/test.smcl

  log type:  smcl

 opened on:  20 Aug 2016, 11:27:58




. sysuse auto.dta, clear

(1978 Automobile Data)




. reg price mpg




      Source |       SS           df       MS      Number of obs   =        74

-------------+----------------------------------   F(1, 72)        =     20.26

       Model |   139449474         1   139449474   Prob > F        =    0.0000

    Residual |   495615923        72  6883554.48   R-squared       =    0.2196

-------------+----------------------------------   Adj R-squared   =    0.2087

       Total |   635065396        73  8699525.97   Root MSE        =    2623.7




------------------------------------------------------------------------------

       price |      Coef.   Std. Err.      t    P>|t|     [95% Conf. Interval]

-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------

         mpg |  -238.8943   53.07669    -4.50   0.000    -344.7008   -133.0879

       _cons |   11253.06   1170.813     9.61   0.000     8919.088    13587.03

------------------------------------------------------------------------------




. log off

      name:  <unnamed>

       log:  /Users/billy/Desktop/Programs/test.smcl

  log type:  smcl

 paused on:  20 Aug 2016, 11:28:13

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Michael Stepner]

Thanks William, that was exactly the command I needed!