st: Memory during a merge

[Fred Wolfe <fwolfe@arthritis-research.org>]

Hi-

During a merge I sometime run into an r(902) out of memory error. This is a 
problem because I am up against Windows XP contiguous memory limitation.

Stata has a keep() option that limits the merging of data in the using data 
set to selected variables. My question is, Does Stata first bring all of 
the using variables into memory or does it somehow drop the non-selected 
using variables before merging. There would clearly be different memory 
demands. As _merge is a built in command, I can't see this for myself. I do 
understand that it is possible to program this behavior.

Thanks,

Fred

Fred Wolfe
National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases
Wichita, Kansas
Tel +1 316 263 2125
fwolfe@arthritis-research.org


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