Re: st: Terminating a loop when a certain value is reached.

[Maarten Buis <maartenlbuis@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 8:26 PM, Stephen Cranney wrote:
> Basically, I'm
> trying to make a microsimulation program in Stata because the other
> microsimulation programs are very technical and require sophisticated
> programming knowledge if you want to customize them to suit your
> needs, whereas a microsimulation program in Stata would be much more
> accessible and customizable. Hence my interest in keeping the code in
> Stata, even though alternative coding languages would be more
> efficient overall.

Loops in such simulations in Stata are often unnecessary. Not only are
the unnecessary, they often make your code more complex than it needs
to be and are thus a source of error (as you have noticed).  The magic
commands/prefixes for avoiding such loops in Stata are -by- and
-expand-. If the purpose of this excercise is to make use of the
simplicity of the Stata language, then you really need to make heavy
use of these commands to avoid loops. Here is a presentation on how to
create such demographic micro simulations without looping in Stata.

<http://www.maartenbuis.nl/presentations/konstanz11.pdf>

Hope this helps,
Maarten

---------------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
WZB
Reichpietschufer 50
10785 Berlin
Germany

http://www.maartenbuis.nl
---------------------------------
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