Data Formats
Contents
Display Formats
list
The list command examines data to (re-)allocate text width. If the longest value for a string variable with format %18s is 12 characters long, then list will only allocate 12 columns for that variable. This behavior can be disabled using the nocompress option.
Note that the default behavior has an impact on performance, especially for large datasets. As such, there is a fast option which is simply an alias for nocompress.
To truncate string values specifically, use the string option.
list comment, string(10)
The list command also abbreviates variable names (defaulting to 8 characters). To increase that character limit, use the abbreviate option.
list very_long_variable_name, abbreviate(50)