st: RE: -replace- should not be use with temporary files (was: Comparing datasets)

["Joseph Coveney" <jcoveney@bigplanet.com>]

Thanks everyone for replying, reminding me of the -save `[undefined]',
replace- hazard.  It's not often that I create or use permanent Stata
dataset files, anymore, and so it's fortunately rare that the opportunity to
catastrophically overwrite one comes up.

To answer Rajesh's question:  it's not so much system resources as mental
resources.  I use temporary files for repeated -merge- and -append- just as
Sergiy illustrated (I imagine that that's their major purpose for most Stata
users), and it's just easier to me--less error prone--to recycle a very
limited number of temporary files for that purpose than to keep track of a
proliferating number of them.  I note, though, that I've developed a habit
of erasing the temporary file at the end of a repeated -merge- or -append-
section of code, so that outside a loop, it's usually -save- 
without -replace-.

Joseph Coveney


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