CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stata
user42459
user42459

Reputation: 915

Stata failing to call global variable?

The following simple thing doesn't work.

global inputfolder "C:\Users\Focus\Google Drive\1. hani and\Raw data\2004"

cd $inputfolder

It says 

invalid syntax

But if I do 

global inputfolder "C:\Users"

cd $inputfolder

Then it works. I tried, among others, adding "="

global inputfolder="C:\Users\Focus\Google Drive\1. hani and\Raw data\2004"

but it didn't help.

What should I do to make the first thing work?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1233

Answers (1)

Nick Cox
Nick Cox

Reputation: 37208

When you write 

global inputfolder "C:\Users\Focus\Google Drive\1. hani and\Raw data\2004"
cd $inputfolder

Stata substitutes the global reference with the contents of the global, so that cd sees 

cd C:\Users\Focus\Google Drive\1. hani and\Raw data\2004

but the spaces are then problematic. This advice is prominent in the help for cd (see e.g. http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?cd):

If your directory_name contains embedded spaces, remember to enclose it in double quotes.

Hence all you need is 

cd "$inputfolder"

Note that the difference between copying a string into a global and assigning a string to a global indeed makes no difference here, as the problem is entirely in feeding cd a string it can't understand.

On a point of terminology, note that global macros are not regarded as variables in Stata. That term is reserved for columns in the dataset.

Upvotes: 4

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