there must be a misunderstanding. i said that when EpiAnalysis encountered the reserve word DATE in the .REC database there was no error message provided. all Analysis did was stop functioning properly. countless hours of searching for the problem and seeking assistance from others would have been avoided if Analysis had provided an error message about reserve words. thanks for the info on screen format. i eventually used the editor in EpiAnalysis and kept everything to the left of the shaded 80 column line provided....just another way.

-----Original Message----- From: epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca [mailto:epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca] Sent: Fri 11/4/2005 2:23 AM To: epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca Cc: Subject: [EpiData-list] Reserved words and a warning on using "if constructs"

1)A member commented on the use of date as a reserved word and the use of chk and dbf files. CHK files are only read with REC files. If you read CSV (delimited files) or DBF files no CHK file of the same name as the csv or dbf file will be used. If you wish to add labels (comment legal) for data in dbf or csv files then do: read myfile.dbf savedata xname * create a chk file with the name xname.chk read xname // obviously any name can be used xname is just an example On the topic of reserved names it is difficult because so many different languages exist. But in general do not use names of functions. E.g. avoid year, date and month use instead Y, d , m or vyear vdate vmonth 2. Using if the use of temporary select is a strong facility, e.g.: count if age > 50 tab sex agegrp if HbA1c > 6 tab sex agegrp if Country = 1 but currently DO NOT USE IF in combination with options for any command, e.g.: tab sex agegrp /Missing if Country = 1 this would be read as: tab sex agegrp /Missing Country = 1 meaning that all data was recoded for variable country. With next release this will be fixed. A new build is on the way fixing this and the other known (few) bugs. But I wish to finalize the aggregate (summary output statistics) command first. 3. Screen fonts in EpiData dataentry can be defined with options and a combination of the use of @ and blanks. See the help file. Screen fonts in analysis are defined with the "Set viewer font name", see the documentation on output formats installed with the programme. Regards Jens Lauritsen EpiData Association