st: Re: SAS libname equivalent

[Roger Newson <roger.newson@kcl.ac.uk>]

At 13:54 28/01/04 -0600, Jason A. Thompson wrote:
> What is the correct way in Stata to establish pointers to paths in Windows 
> XP, something along the lines of the LIBNAME and FILENAME statements in 
> SAS? Can this be done using Windows environment variables? Can it be done 
> without? Can it be done at all?! I've found the ability to do this in 
> other environments critical to maintaining shared code.
I personally store the path in a macro using a command near the top of a 
do-file. For instance, I might have a line near the top of the do-file like

global retr1 "../../../data/retr1/dta"

which stores the path "../../../data/retr1/dta" in the global macro named 
retr1. If I want to refer to any Stata data file in that folder further 
down in the do-file, then I use a command like

use $retr1/request1,clear

which reads data from the file

../../../data/retr1/dta/request1.dta

into the memory. If you later rearrange your hierarchy of folders, then you 
need only alter the line near the top of the do-file with the -global- 
statement, and do not have to change any of the references further down. 
See -help macro- for more information about Stata macros.

I hope this helps.

Roger


--
Roger Newson
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Department of Public Health Sciences
King's College London
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Tel: 020 7848 6648 International +44 20 7848 6648
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Email: roger.newson@kcl.ac.uk
Website: http://www.kcl-phs.org.uk/rogernewson

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

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