Re: st: data type question

[Jeph Herrin <junk@spandrel.net>]

This is strange; did you create these variables, or import
them? I once saw something like this when using Stat/Transfer
to create a Stata file; it created -byte-s that contained
-float-s.

Jeph


Rike wrote:
> Dear Statalist,
>
> when using "compress" to free up room in the memory, i see that some
> variables have their data types changed from byte to float. When I
> look at stata's help file for data types however, it says that "byte"
> takes up 1 byte, while "float" takes up 4 bytes.
>
> My questions:
> 1) why is it that stata changes data types from byte to float when
> float is supposed to take up more space?
> 2) In order to free up space, is it better to manually set the
> variable to "byte" when I generate them? (rather than compressing,
> that is)
>
> Thanks in advance.
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