Hi

2 Questions -

1) I was wondering if anyone had advice on how to learn to define programs in Stata. Are there any resources you could point me towards?
2) I want to define a program on Stata but I am not sure if it is possible so please forgive me if what I am asking is nonsense. I would like to create a Stata program that would help provide descriptive statistics with just one line of code. For example

cap program drop descstat
program define descstat, rclass
version 13.0
syntax tab(varlist) codebook(varlist) sum(varlist) table(varlist)
tab1 `tab', m
sum `sum'
codebook `codebook'
table `table'
end

(Let's assume we use sysuse auto.dta) The command I would like to enter is

descstat tab(foreign make) sum(price-weight) codebook(rep78) table(foreign rep78)


The code above does not work (obviously), but I inserted it to give you an idea of what I am trying to achieve. I want to create a program that would provide the tab of the specific variables i list within the "(varlist)", sum of the variables and codebook of the variables that I specify.....Is this possible?

Thanks,