Re: Is it a bug or a feature

[John Darrington]

On Tue, May 14, 2013 at 11:47:25PM +0000, Crichton, Ronald wrote:
     I found an interesting thing.  With this piece of code you will note the 
only essential difference is that variable e329 is repeated in one and not in 
the other.  However, the output of both is identical.  The command ignores the 
repeated variable.  It may be that a user might want to see the variable twice, 
maybe not.  The thing is the command doesn't report what it was asked to do.  
Of course, there would be easy ways around this, but I just wanted to note it 
for your consideration.
     
     get file VLL.
     
     save translate
                     /outfile = 'I:\SUPPORT_COMMON\Statistics 
Unit\PLANNING\POLICY\STATS\2012\2012 whole year data verification\VLL_TEMP1.txt'
                     /type = TAB
                     /replace
                     /keep = e329 e329 e477 e358 e490 e577 eftsl.
     execute.
     
     save translate
                     /outfile = 'I:\SUPPORT_COMMON\Statistics 
Unit\PLANNING\POLICY\STATS\2012\2012 whole year data 
verification\VLL_TEMP1b.txt'
                     /type = TAB
                     /replace
                     /keep = e329 e477 e358 e490 e577 eftsl.
     execute.
     
     
     
I would say it is a "feature".   Having a variable twice in the output would 
just waste space in the output file (and
might confuse some readers, when two columns with the same name were 
encountered).  If somebody really wanted to have
another column with the same values, then it would be easy for them to add a 
line like:

COMPUTE e329_2nd = e329.
     

Maybe we should update the documentation of this section to explain better how 
KEEP / DROP works.
     

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