st: RE: searching the notes

[Roger Harbord <roger.harbord@bristol.ac.uk>]

Many thanks Nick for astoundingly quick program writing and memory of past 
threads. I'm afraid i didn't follow that thread on 11 May and i've found 
searching Statalist archives is often pretty hopeless in practice unless you 
can remember something of a thread to narrow things down (just try searching 
for "notes"...  234 results is too much for me esp. as most of them seem to be 
returned inappropriately - e.g. "notes" appears only in subject of the "Next 
by Date" message!).

In testing -searchnotes- i found that parsing with -syntax name- wasn't ideal 
in that it prevented me searching for e.g. "g/L" or "protein C". Also I'd 
prefer it to be case insensitive, like -lookfor- (i just found Dan 
Blanchette's -lookforit- on SSC which allows a more flexible approach but 
haven't attempted that). I've stolen some code from the built-in lookfor.ado 
and ended up with the code below. -lookfor- uses -index- instead of -substr 
local- which seems more elegant but i can't take any credit for that 
obviously. Unlike -lookfor- the code below only searches for one string at a 
time and does the same thing whether or not that string is in quotes. No 
particular reason other than that's what i usually want myself and the 
behaviour of -lookfor- is a bit more complex to program.

However personally i'd find it more convenient if this was part of the 
official -lookfor- (maybe with a -,notes- option) if StataCorp are listening 
and happen to think it worthwhile..

Roger.
----------------------------------------------------
Roger Harbord     mailto:roger.harbord@bristol.ac.uk
Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol

*! NJC / RMH 1.0.1 4 Aug 2004
program searchnotes
version 8

	if `"`*'"' == "" {
		di as err "nothing to search for"
		exit 198
		}

	local what = lower(`"`*'"')
	
	local nnotes "`: char _dta[note0]'"
	if "`nnotes'" != "" {
		forval i = 1/`nnotes' {
			local char : char _dta[note`i']
			if index(lower(`"`char'"'),`"`what'"')  {
				di as res "_dta: " as txt `"`char'"'
				}
			}	
		}
	
	foreach v of var * {
		local nnotes "`: char `v'[note0]'"
		if "`nnotes'" != "" {
			forval i = 1/`nnotes' {
				local char : char `v'[note`i']
				if index(lower(`"`char'"'),`"`what'"')  {
					di as res "`v': " as txt `"`char'"'
					}
				}
			}
		}
end



--On 03 August 2004 19:55 +0100 Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk> wrote:


> This would seem approachable
> as a variation on various programs
> posted on 11 May, e.g.
>
> *! NJC 1.0.0 3 Aug 2004
> program searchnotes
> 	version 8
> 	syntax name(name=what)
> 	
> 	local nnotes "`: char _dta[note0]'"
> 	if "`nnotes'" != "" {
> 		forval i = 1/`nnotes' {
> 			local char : char _dta[note`i']
> 			local WHAT : ///
> 		subinstr local char `"`what'"' `"`what'"', count(local n)
> 			if `n' {
> 				di as res "_dta: " as txt `"`char'"'
> 			}
> 		}	
> 	}
>
> 	foreach v of var * {
> 		local nnotes "`: char `v'[note0]'"
> 		if "`nnotes'" != "" {
> 			forval i = 1/`nnotes' {
> 				local char : char `v'[note`i']
> 				local WHAT : ///
> 		subinstr local char `"`what'"' `"`what'"', count(local n)
> 				if `n' {
> 					di as res "`v': " as txt `"`char'"'
> 				}
> 			}
> 		}
> 	}
> end
>
> I'd appreciate a more elegant method of counting...
>
> Nick
> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> > [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu]On Behalf Of
> > Roger Harbord
> > Sent: 03 August 2004 19:29
> > To: Statalist; tech-support@stata.com
> > Subject: st: searching the notes
> >
> >
> > Is there any way of searching all the -notes- for a given
> > string?  I find
> > -lookfor- very useful when dealing with datasets with many
> > variables but it
> > would be even more useful if it had a -, notes- option to
> > allow searching of
> > the notes attached to the variables too. Alternatively maybe
> > if -notes list-
> > had a -, find(string)- option..?
> >
> > I realise that you need to have a lot of notes in your
> > dataset to find this
> > useful - we do here as our database manager has set up a
> > clever system (don't
> > ask me how it works) to export from Access to Stata so each
> > Field Description
> > in Access becomes a note attached to that variable in Stata.
> > (The Field
> > Descriptions are too long to make useful variable labels and
> > often exceed the
> > limit of 80 characters for variable labels.)
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