st: basic string operations

[Kit Baum <kitbaum@mac.com>]

Code like this is meaningless:

> for file in `filename'{
> inflie "'$dict`$file.dct' ", using(" $data'$var' ")
 ...
Global $var is undefined, and putting single quotes around it doesn't  
help that. The for command is undocumented and deprecated.

Presuming you mean 'infile', you should first redefine filenames with  
forward slashes only so that Stata does not misinterpret the  
backslash operator:

global base "c:/program files/stuff/"
cd $base
forvalues i=1/200 {
	infile "$base/dict/file`i'.dct", using("$base/data/file`i'"),clear
	save file`i',replace
}
use file1,clear
forvalues i=2/200 {
	append using file`i'
}
save allfiles,replace

You could use tempfiles, or you could include a step to remove the  
intermediate files within the second forvalues loop. If the filenames  
are not file1-file200, you could either use a local defining them and  
a foreach loop or you could capture the infile and append commands.


Kit Baum, Boston College Economics
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html


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