Fred Wolfe <[email protected]> has asked some Stata 9/10
compatibility questions. The first was
> However, the new help file extension will not work with older versions. Is
> it possible for Stata Corp to add the ability to read .sthlp help files to
> the final version of Stata 9?
In Stata 10, the new help-file extension is .sthlp.
In Stata 9, it was .hlp.
Stata 10 continues to understand .hlp.
So my first answer concerning compatibility is that if an ado-file
is written in Stata 9 or before, its corresponding help files should
be named using the .hlp extension. Files named this way will be
usable both by Stata 9 and Stata 10. If an ado-file is written in
Stata 10, its corresponding help file should be named using the .sthlp
extension. Stata 9 won't be able to find the help file, but Stata 9
won't be able to run a Stata 10 ado-file anyway.
My second answer is this: If for some reason Kit Baum wants to standardize
the Boston archive on .sthlp, even for Stata 9, then I will write a Stata 9
ado-file that will search all installed .sthlp files and rename them .hlp.
The command could be called -fixsthlp- and would take no arguments. Thus, a
Stata 9 user, after install, would have to type only -fixsthlp-.
I don't think that will be necessary, however. My first answer is
better. Before Stata 10, help files a suffixed with .hlp. From Stata 10
on, help files are suffixed with .sthlp. Follow that rule and everything
will then just work.
Fred also asks,
> BTW, changing the subject slightly, does anyone know if the files
> created with version 10 will be larger and, if so, how much larger?
Yes, they are larger, but not by much. In Stata 9, the display formats
for each variable were 12 characters each. In Stata 10, because of the
new date/time variables, tey are 49 characters each. That's an increase
of 37 bytes per variable. If your dataset contained 1,000 variables,
the .dta file would be 37,000 bytes longer.
-- Bill
[email protected]
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