st: Searching for files with a particular *value* of a variable

[Partho Sarkar <partho.ss+lists@gmail.com>]

 Dear colleagues,

 I need to search through a large number of files in a folder (with
subfolders) for the presence of a particular *value* of a variable.  I
know (and have found very useful) the -lookfor_all- program ( by Zurab
Sajaia, Michael Lokshin and Dan Blanchette ) (SSC download) can find
occurences of variables, labels etc in a directory path.  I also just
discovered Daniel Klein's -lookfor_val-  (SSC download), which can
"Search for value patterns in *current* data set", but it doesn't
offer an option to search through a list of files . Can anyone here
suggest a way out?

[ I can think of a way to combine the above two utilities, using
-lookfor_all-  to locate the files, and then  -lookfor_val-  to loop
through all the files thus found, and using the returned results for
each file  to flag the matching files.  But since  -lookfor_all-  does
not (as far as I can see) return the names of the files it finds in a
stored result (only displaying them on the screen), I cannot easily
think of a relatively simple process to get what I need by combining
the two programs. ]

Thanks & regards,

Partha S. Sarkar
Consultant Econometrician
Indicus Analytics Pvt. Ltd (www.indicus.net)
New Delhi, India

*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/