[email protected] wrote
> Maybe things are simpler that I think they are but, for what
> I understand of -merge-, it would merge observations that would
> have similar values on one or several variables both in File A
> and File B. The three variables Year, Age and Area do not exist
> as such in File B: Year defines lines while columns are
> combinations of Age within Area. Furthermore, there will not be
> unique combinations of Year, Age and Area in A: some elements of
> B will have to be copied several times to different lines of A.
> Also I need to copy only one value from File B on any given line
> of A, not all 770 values of a given line of B.
Use Jeroen Weesie -mmerge- (available on SSC). Type -ssc desc mmerge- to
see a description. The routine allows you to specify different names for
the match variables in the _using_ dataset with option -umatch()-. For
example, to match variables a, b, and c from the master data (your File A)
with variables, d, e, and f of the using data (your File B), invoke
mmerge a b c, umatch(d e f)
Note that you must specify the same number of match variables in umatch() as
mmerge's varlist.
To handle the fact that the match variables may not form a key in the using
data (File B), you can use option type() with parameter 1:n, i.e.
mmerge a b c, umatch(d e f) type(1:n)
the initial 1 in type() specifies that variables a b c form a key in the
master data, while the n after the colon states that variables d e f do not
form a key in the using data.
Finally, since you are only interested in observations in the using data
that are a match with the master file, specify option -unmatch(master)-.
(This is not a typo, -umatch()- and -unmatch()- are different options.)
Patrick Joly
[email protected]
[email protected]
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
