Thanks to Nick & Kit for their very helpful sample programs. I have
tried to combine and modify what they presented, but I'm still having
some difficulties writing a version that does exactly I want. Despite
reading what I think are the relevant parts of the manuals, I have run
into the following issues:
1. I want to see the dates that contain *any* of the variables to be
listed, with missing values indicated as appropriate. A consequence of
using the -marksample touse- command (I think) is that only dates with
*all* the variables to be listed are shown. Put another way, I want to
see the union and not the intersection of the samples corresponding to
the varlist. Simply dropping the -marksample- command caused all -if-
conditions added to -tslist- calls to be ignored, which is no solution.
2. Since I want a list by the time series variable, and since this is
easily recovered from the -tsset- command as `r(timevar)', I made this
the first argument in the list (see below). However, I'd like to be
able to purge the timevar from the varlist if the user (me)
inadvertently included it -- that is, have the timevar listed once
(first) rather than twice. However, I could not figure out how to drop
the timevar from the varlist if it was included.
3. -sep()- puts the dividers in the "wrong" place if the sample
doesn't start with the first sub-unit of time of the year. For
example, -sep(4)- with data starting in the third quarter places the
separator between Q2 and Q3 of subsequent years, rather than at the
change in year (the "natural" place). In theory, I can get around this
problem by using -sepby()- instead of -sep()- as the option on -list-
in my program, if I can identify the year changes. Here is a version
of I have tried:
program tslist
version 8.2
syntax varlist [if] [in], [*]
marksample touse
capture tsset
local timevar `r(timevar)'
local unit `r(unit1)'
local yr "`yofd(dof`unit'(`timevar'))'"
list `yr' `timevar' `varlist' if `touse', sepby(`yr') noobs `options'
end
Problem is, this doesn't have any effect -- the separators still occur
every 5 observations. Moreover, the variable `yr' does not show up in
the listing (added simply to troubleshoot), so apparently it is not
defined correctly. I've tried various permutations of the single and
double quotes, but nothing helped. (In fact, most just retuned an
error.)
If I replace the last two lines with:
gen yr = yofd(dof`unit'(`timevar'))
list yr `timevar' `varlist' if `touse', sepby(yr) noobs `options'
and add a -preserve- after the -version- line, it then works as
intended.(!) S
Suggestions are welcome, especially ideas on how to address the first
two issues listed above. (Yes, at some point I also should add some
error checking as Nick and Kit did in their versions, but I still am
learning to crawl here....) TIA.
