RE: st: Store datafile at minimum possible file size

["Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

Note that Stata 11 has an embedded -zipfile- command. 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
[mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Abdel Rahmen
El Lahga
Sent: 16 April 2010 12:16
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: st: Store datafile at minimum possible file size

In my experience the best solution is to zip immediatlt the stata file
without using ascci format. If we try
************
clear*
set mem 2g
set obs 10000000
gen str12 var1 ="abcdefghijkl"
gen str14 var2 ="abcdefghijklmn"
gen var3 =rnormal()
gen var4 =runiform()
compress
qui save data_boehm , replace
outfile using "ascii_boehm.raw", replace
ls
-rw-r--r--    1 abdelrahmenlahga  staff  550000000 Apr 16 12:05
ascii_boehm.raw
-rw-r--r--    1 abdelrahmenlahga  staff  340000912 Apr 16 12:00
data_boehm.dta
*********
As you can see the ascii file is much bigger than the Stata one.
you can zip it to reduce the file zize to about 85m
HTH
AbdelRahmen

2010/4/16 Michael Boehm <michael.boehm1@gmail.com>:
> Dear statalisters,
>
> I have a big datafile (2 string variables, 2 numeric one, 10million
> observations) created in Stata and want to save it in the smallest
> version possible. I have tried out the "outfile" command to write it
> as an ASCII, but as far as I understand this doesn't give me the
> smallest ASCII file possible. Can anyone help?

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