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st: Re: Insheet question


From   Roger Newson <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   st: Re: Insheet question
Date   Fri, 27 Feb 2004 15:34:41 +0000

At 09:46 27/02/04 -0500, Robin Newberry wrote:
Probably another dumb newbie question, but...

I'm trying to read a tab delimited file into a Stata (Intercooled 8.2) data set using insheet. It's fairly large (3800+ observations, 424 variables) and the first line contains the variable names. Without the variable name line Stata reads it in fine, but with the variable name line I get a

"if invalid varname
error in line 1 of file"

error message. I've looked at the variable names, but I don't see anything obviously wrong, and the Stata help file doesn't say much about what constitutes valid variable names, nor is the User's Guide overwhelmingly informative on this issue. Anyone know what the maximum length for a variable name is? Any other common pitfalls unique to Stata I should look for?
It looks as if you have a variable named "if". The Stata language has a list of reserved words (including "if"), which cannot be used as variable names, because Stata wants to use them for something else. The full list is in Section 14.3 of the User's Guide (at least in Stata 7 and Stata 8).

I hope this helps.

Roger


--
Roger Newson
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Department of Public Health Sciences
King's College London
5th Floor, Capital House
42 Weston Street
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United Kingdom

Tel: 020 7848 6648 International +44 20 7848 6648
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Email: [email protected]
Website: http://www.kcl-phs.org.uk/rogernewson

Opinions expressed are those of the author, not the institution.

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