st: passing macros to dictionary files

[Douglas Levy <douglas_levy@post.harvard.edu>]

Hi All,
I am trying to import a large number of files and aggregate them. My
strategy was to create <for> loops that generate macros with the
identifying file names (dates and cash register numbers). However, it
seems that I can't pass those macros on to the dictionary file, even
after converting the local macros from the <for> loops to global
macros that I thought I could pass to the dictionary file.

Here is an example of my code where I am trying to import data for the
first three days in March for registers 1 to 6:

forvalues x=1/3 {
local x=string(`x',"%02.0f")
forvalues myreg=1/6 {
local myreg=string(`myreg',"%02.0f")
global date_reg="201403`x'_`myreg'"
infile using "mydictionary.dct"
save "mynewfile.dta"
}
}

and the dictionary file is:

dictionary using "${date_reg}.csv" {str244 test}

When I run this, I get an error message suggesting that Stata did not
parse the macro at all:

file ${date_reg}.csv not found
dictionary invalid

Thoughts? Is it impossible to pass a macro to a dictionary file? If
so, is there another way to use a single dictionary for many different
files? Thanks in advance for your advice!
-Doug
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