displaying the contents of a macro

[Ethan Schoolman]

Hi all: I am using "macro list" to display the contents of all the macros I have created (locals and globals). But what command to I use, or what option, to display the contents of just one macro, or just two? I have not been able to figure this out...

[Iuri Gavronski]

Hi,
I normally use display, such as

di "`local'"
di "$global"

local and global are the individual macro names you are interested in.

[Ethan Schoolman]

And, that seems to have done it. Thank you!

[William Lisowski]

While display is the common tool for displaying things flexibly, we should note for future readers that the macro list command will accept macro names and display just those macros.

. local mac1 "This is local macro mac1"

. local mac2 "This is local macro mac2"

. global mac3 "This is global macro mac3"

. macro list mac3
mac3:           This is global macro mac3

. macro list _mac2
_mac2:          This is local macro mac2

Also, there are strange cases where display can mislead you and macro list is necessary to know exactly what the contents are.

. global odd \$strange

. global strange even

. * display $odd
. macro list odd strange
odd:            $strange
strange:        even

. display "$odd"
even

.

[Ethan Schoolman]

Ah, that is very helpful, too. I did search the Stata command help files for something like this, but asked it to "help macro list", and it returned "help macrolists", which I did not notice the difference, and which was not what I was looking for. But if I just type "help macro", it does indeed show "macro list" as one option. Thank you.