Potential help/manual error for spdistance stored results

[Tim Carroll]

I am using spdistance in Stata 18.5 for Windows and noticed a potential error in the help/manual. Hoping others can either confirm it or point out something I'm missing before I contact Stata.

In short, this is my first time using spdistance and I noticed that help and manual both refer to distance between being stored in r(dist). When I tried to use r(dist) to preserve results, I got an error and I realized the local was empty. When I tried again using r(distance), the code worked as expected (i.e. the value returned by spdistance is preserved in a distance variable). Sample code below to replicate what I'm seeing--am I correct that spdistance stores distance between in r(distance), not r(dist) as indicated in help/manual, and that help/manual should be corrected? Thanks.

capture clear

input byte id byte x byte y float lon float lat
    1 0 0  -96.2458 30.5533
    2 3 4  -73.9823 40.7533
    3 5 12 -19.6068 63.6329
    4 8 15  28.8686 41.0006
end

gen xy_dist = .
gen xy_distance = .

gen lonlat_dist = .
gen lonlat_distance = .

spset id, coord(x y)

forval z = 2/4 {
    spdistance 1 `z'
    
    di "Stored in r(dist): `r(dist)'"
    capture replace xy_dist = `r(dist)' if id == `z'
    
    di "Stored in r(distance): `r(distance)'" _n(2)
    capture replace xy_distance = `r(distance)' if id == `z'
}

spset, modify coord(lon lat) coordsys(latlong, miles)

forval z = 2/4 {
    spdistance 1 `z'
    
    di "Stored in r(dist): `r(dist)'"
    capture replace lonlat_dist = `r(dist)' if id == `z'
    
    di "Stored in r(distance): `r(distance)'" _n(2)
    capture replace lonlat_distance = `r(distance)' if id == `z'
}

[George Ford]

I'd report it.