Re: st: Stata 9 datasets readable by Stata 8?

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@ND.edu>]

At 02:43 PM 5/9/2005 -0400, Dan Blanchette wrote:
> It seems that the only change in the datafile is related to value labels.
> Stata 9 now allows value labels to be up to 32,000 characters long and
> in different languages.  So if your Stata 9 dataset does not take advantage
> of these new features, can it still be read by Stata 8 and by data transfer
> software like DBMS/Copy and StatTransfer?
-svyset- has a lot more options now, and those get saved with the 
dataset.  So, perhaps that also creates compatibility problems across 
versions?  Apparently not, however, since it says at

http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?save

"If you are using Stata 9 and want to save a file so that it may be read by 
someone using Stata 8, simply use the save command. Stata 8 and Stata 9 
share the same dataset format. Stata 9 allows value labels to be up to 
32,000 characters long. If Stata 8 tries to read a Stata 9 dataset with 
value labels that exceed the Stata 8 limit (244 for Stata/SE; 80 for Stata 
Intercooled), Stata 8 will ignore those labels and read the rest of the 
dataset. "


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Richard Williams, Notre Dame Dept of Sociology
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