Re: st: -set obs- for -tempfile-

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

As you say, there are some misunderstandings here.

-tempfile- itself does no more than set up a temporary _name_ for a
file that you may (or indeed may not) use later in the same program.
It's like booking a table in a restaurant or seats for a performance.

If I do this

. tempfile foo

. di "`foo'"
C:\DOCUME~1\NJCGEO~1.000\LOCALS~1\Temp\ST_0u000001.tmp

. dir  "`foo'"
file not found

Stata has done one (and only one) thing: worked out a name for a file
ahead of its use; at that point the file does not even exist.

So, your problems of understanding are quite different

1. -set obs- will not _reduce_ the number of observations in memory.
This is all part of  Stata's attitude that it won't destroy data as a
side-effect of something else. That's why Stata is complaining; no
files are implied in the complaint.

2. You don't need to -set obs- for a file. Indeed that does not even
have a meaning as -set obs- refers only to the dataset _in memory_. In
order to write 12 observations to a file, write 12 observations to a
file; -set- is not needed and does not even apply directly.

3. It also follows that there is no sense in which -set obs- refers
back to the original file, which remains exactly as it was (unless you
change it, which you would have to do some other way).

There will be a kind of "Yes, of course" when you think it through....

Nick

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Lythgoe, Dan
<D.Lythgoe@liverpool.ac.uk> wrote:

> I'm clearly missing something when it comes to -tempfile- and I wonder if you can help. With a data set in memory I want to create a (very small) temporary data set where I can -set obs-, plot a simple graph and then restore the original data. Using a combination of -preserve- and -clear- works fine:
>
> /****START****/
> sysuse auto, clear
>
> preserve
> clear
> set obs 12
> gen x = _n
> gen y = x^2
> line y x
> /****END****/
>
>
> However I had anticipated that using -tempfile- would do the same but clearly -set obs- is not setting the number of observations for the temporary file but for the original file:
>
>
> /****START****/
> sysuse auto, clear
>
> tempfile temp
> set obs 12
> gen x = _n
> gen y = x^2
> line y x
> /****END****/
>
> Returns the error:
>
> obs must be between 74 and 2147483646
> r(198);
>

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