Macros

In Stata, any part of the code can be substituted with macros. There are no macros in R: you cannot directly substitute some part of your code by enclosing it in special quotes. You can only substitute objects in R

• You can replace scalars:

  Stata	scalar x = 10 keep if _n <= `x'
  dplyr	x <- 10 slice(df, 1:x)

• You can replace strings:

  Stata	local x MYFILE import delimited ~/`x'.csv
  dplyr	x <- "MYFILE" read_csv(paste("~/", x, ".csv", sep = ""))

• You can replace functions:

  Stata	local x mean egen v1_mean = `x'(v1), by(id)
  dplyr	x <- mean df %>% group_by(id) %>% mutate(v1_mean = x(v1))

• You can replace variable names

  To substitute one variable (given as a symbol), use {{}}

    var <- sym("height")
    starwars %>% select({{var}})
    starwars %>% mutate("mean_{{var}}" := mean({{var}})) 
  

  To substitute several variables (given as a vector of characters), use all_of()

    vars <- c("height", "birth_year")
    starwars %>% select(all_of(vars))
    starwars %>% mutate(across(all_of(vars), mean))