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RE: st: Appending several files


From   "Nuno Soares" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   RE: st: Appending several files
Date   Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:26:00 +0100

Thanks David. 

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected]
Sent: 16 October 2006 03:18
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: st: Appending several files

Ulrich Kohler already supplied an interesting solution.  I'd like to show
how I usually handle this sort of situation (which does come up often --
with either -append- or -merge-). This might be more of an old-fashioned
programmer's method.

local j "0"
foreach f in `r(files)' {
 if `j' == 0 {
  use `f'
 }
 else {
  append using `f' 
 }
local ++j
}

One can be more clever by putting the ++j (or j++) inside the -if-
statement, if you prefer.
I haven't yet tried that technique; it might go if `j++' ==0 (if I have the
syntax right -- or is it `=j++' ... ?) or even if ~`j++'

I hope this is may be useful.
--David
-------------- Original message from "Nuno Soares" <[email protected]>:
-------------- 


> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm trying to make Stata to append several files that are in a given 
> directory without the need of specifying the name of each one. I was 
> thinking of doing something like this (using the fs package):
> 
> clear
> cd "C:\data" 
> qui fs *
> foreach f in `r(files)' {
> append using `f' 
> }
> 
> The problem with this code is that Stata doesn't allow to append a 
> data file when it doesn't have a file opened (it will return the error
message:
> "no dataset in use
> r(3)")
> 
> This means that I must have at least one of the files loaded in Stata 
> before using the above code. But if I then use the above code, I would 
> end up getting duplicate observations, because the file I've first 
> used is also appended... Any ideas of how to solve this issue?
> 
> Best,
> 
> Nuno
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