I started writing a work-around, got some way with -file-
and then thought of a good name, -intext-.
A -findit- then revealed that Roger Newson had taken every
such step before, and many more.
See -intext- on SSC.
Nick
[email protected]
Ron�n Conroy
> I am doing a nightmare task, which entails cleaning up almost 3,000
> individual files, each one of which represents data on a single study
> participant. The datafiles contain a myriad of oddities, some
> of which
> appears to be corruption, which I have gradually winnowed out (OS X
> users might like to know that Textalchemy is free, and does a
> splendid
> job of cleaning corrupted text files...)
>
> However, my next step is to read the files, one at a time,
> into Stata,
> do some more polishing and write ASCII files. There is a
> reason for this
> intermediate step, and it's too tedious to explain, but basically I'm
> reading the participant's data file as if it were a series of
> one-line
> records, eliminating blank lines and trimming duplicate information.
>
> But here's the problem: I'm using a simple dictionary file
>
> infix dictionary {
> str var1 1-80
> }
>
> However, when Stata reads in the data, it trims trailing
> spaces off the
> lines. Actually, leading and trailing spaces are important,
> as this is
> fixed format data, with varying line lengths. But try as I
> may, I cannot
> get Stata to read the entire line including leading and
> trailing blanks.
> Any ideas?
>
> The website of the group which developed the original package
> was last
> updated in 1999, and I'm told they don't answer email any
> more, which is
> why I have been landed with this pack of puppies...
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