Re: st: Problem with infix: record too long

[Barbara Guimarães <barbara.vgh@gmail.com>]

Nick, thanks for your response.

Using the type filename.txt as you suggested, Stata showed me the
following first lines:

 type TS_QUEST_ALUNO.txt
 1373262421RN24GROSSOS
2404408ADCDBAAACABDCABCEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAC*CBAABAAAAAA
 1373263421RN24GROSSOS
2404408BDKEAAAABABDCADBDACAAAB.AAAAAAAABBBBACAAAAAA
 1373264421RN24GROSSOS
2404408BAAACBAAB..DCADCDAAAAAABBAAAAAAAAABCAAAA.A..

and which than ended as:

> ......................................................................................................................................................................................................
> ............................................................................................................................................................c4 ......?.:Z3.
.R...x.9..........T.Np(0$%'...@#../q..'!m.t.F2$*J

It looks like, to me, that this would be a fixed format. But I might be wrong.

regards,
Barbara

2011/4/24 Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>:
> Your last question is, in effect, can I explain to you how to read a
> binary file with unspecified structure into Stata, and the short
> answer is sorry, no.
>
> It's a rare word processor that can open large binary files with
> success. Word processors accept a range of formats for documents,
> tending to prefer their own proprietary format, but are usually
> useless at reading binary data files. A good text editor could do it;
> that does not include the proprietary editors bundled with MS Windows.
>
> I wonder if you are being misled by the first line in the help for
> -infix- below, while overlooking the second line, which is vital.
>
> "infix reads into memory from a disk dataset that is not in Stata
> format.  infix requires
>    that the data be in fixed-column format."
>
> As you reported, Stata is seeing far fewer end-of-line character pairs
> \r\n than lines in this file, \r and \n characters are occurring by
> themselves, which is not standard for text files in MS Windows, and
> -hexdump- is labelling this binary. It' s unlikely to be wrong on
> that.
>
> You could try just
>
> . type filename.txt
>
> in Stata and that might show you, and us, the first few lines of the
> file. They might be recognisable to someone as in a particular format.
>
> I think if you can't get an idea of what the structure of this file
> is, then you have no way to read it into Stata. Why a "government
> organisation" is providing a binary file and calling a .txt I cannot
> explain. You may need to talk to them.
>
> Nick
>
> 2011/4/24 Barbara Guimarães <barbara.vgh@gmail.com>:
>> Dear Nick, unfortunetly, I'm not being able to open the file with any
>> word processor (I believe that it is because of its size / this
>> dataset was provided by an government organization, so I already
>> received it in .txt format and don't have access to the primary data)
>>
>>
>> However, the output of the hexdump analyze was:
>>
>>
>>>> . hexdump TS_QUEST_ALUNO.txt, analyze
>>
>>
>>  Line-end characters                                           Line
>> length (tab=1)
>>
>>    \r\n         (Windows)               2,517,361
>> minimum                        0
>>
>>    \r by itself (Mac)                        686,626
>> maximum               20,971,542
>>
>>    \n by itself (Unix)                      768,441
>>
>>  Space/separator characters                               Number of
>> lines           3,972,429
>>
>>    [blank]                                112,067,613
>>  EOL at EOF?                  no
>>
>>    [tab]                                          707,187
>>
>>    [comma] (,)                               765,547           Length
>> of first 5 lines
>>
>>  Control characters
>>   Line 1                       120
>>
>>    binary 0                               30,611,037
>>  Line 2                       120
>>
>>    CTL excl. \r, \n, \t                 19,330,367
>> Line 3                       120
>>
>>    DEL                                          367,820
>>     Line 4                       120
>>
>>    Extended (128-159,255)     21,370,596                    Line 5
>>                   120
>>
>>  ASCII printable
>>
>>    A-Z                                    149,642,323
>>
>>    a-z                                       16,234,081
>> File format                 BINARY
>>
>>    0-9                                       53,967,247
>>
>>    Special (!@#$ etc.)              28,963,365
>>
>>    Extended (160-254)             54,882,559
>>
>>                          ---------------
>>
>>  Total                                    495,399,531
>>
>>
>>
>>  Observed were:
>>
>>     \0 ^A ^B ^C ^D ^E ^F ^G ^H \t \n ^K ^L \r ^N ^O ^P ^Q ^R ^S ^T ^U ^V ^W
>>
>>     ^X ^Y ^Z Esc 28 29 30 31 blank ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . / 0 1 2 3 4 5
>>
>>     6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? @ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y
>>
>>     Z [ \ ] ^ _ ` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z { | }
>>
>>     ~ DEL 128 E^A E^B E^C E^D E^E E^F E^G E^H E^I E^J E^K E^L E^M E^N E^O
>>
>>     E^P E^Q E^R E^S E^T E^U E^V E^W E^X E^Y E^Z 155 156 157 158 159 160 ¡ ¢
>>
>>     £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § ¨ © ª « ¬ ­ ® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼ ½ ¾ ¿ À Á Â Ã Ä Å Æ
>>
>>     Ç È É Ê Ë Ì Í Î Ï Ð Ñ Ò Ó Ô Õ Ö × Ø Ù Ú Û Ü Ý Þ ß à á â ã ä å æ ç è é ê
>>
>>     ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ 255
>>
>>
>> Is there any way I could transform this dataset in a way Stata would
>> read it entirely?
>>
>
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