Amani Siyam
>
> I have a dta-file version 7 that I need to provide to my
> colleague as an SPSS file- I have realised our current
> version of Stat-transfer can not read Stata 7 files.
>
> I have tried saving the file as version 6 by "save, replace
> old" after the hassle of having to reduce all variable
> names to 8-characters or less.
>
> My query comes in two parts:
>
> 1. I still have a problem with labels - Stata is telling
> me "value label name .. too long"
> What can I do about that...
The specific problem is that the limit for value label
names in Stata 6 was 8 characters.
So one solution is to rename the value label.
If you have one long label name defining
a few labels, just create a new set of value
labels by hand with a shorter name, drop the set with
a too long name, and attach the new set to the variable(s)
in question.
However, you may have lots of such long label names.
It may be that you should write a program to save the
labels to a file and then edit the names
to shorter and reattach to the original variales. That
would seem rather awkward. Perhaps easier is
to -decode- variables with long labels; here
I am assuming in ignorance that between them
Stat-Transfer and SPSS can handle the resulting
string variables.
Something like this code in Stata 7.0 will -decode- the
variables. It seems that you have already
fixed any variable names which are too long.
However, be warned that I did not test the code.
Also, omit the comments which are there largely
to protect the "{" against a possible mailer bug which
sometimes strips "{" when it is the last character
on a line.
foreach v of var * { /* for every variable */
local lbl : value label `v'
if length("`lbl'") > 8 { /* label name is too long */
tempvar decoded
decode `v', gen(`decoded')
drop `v'
rename `decoded' `v'
}
}
> 2. If I manage to update Stat - Transfer Ver 6.0, and
> transfer my original Ver 7.0 files to SPSS , will I still
> face the same problem (a variable name which is
> more than 8 characters) this time with SPSS.
Steve Dubnoff has already replied to this.
Nick
[email protected]
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