Jun Xu ([email protected])
> Question about multiple perserve and restore in an ado file.
> Here Stata
> will produce error message since I have two preserve's in the
> following ado
> file. As I need to create a data set that is a subset of the
> one managed
> within the second "preserve", I use preserve and restore
> since I am going to
> work on the one immediately before the second preserve. But
> I still need to
> put preserve right below program define command since there
> are some other
> manipulations outside the second preserve/restore block like the sort
> command. One way that's possible is to undo some data
> management witin this
> ado like sort back to the original data before executing this
> ado file as I
> am doing at teh end of the ado file. But are there any other
> tricks to go
> about it?
>
> ****************************************************
> for num 1/6: set obs 100\ gen xX=invnorm(uniform())
> capture program drop trial
> program define trial
>
> perserve /*first perserve*/
>
> tempvar obsn what
>
> quietly gen `obsn'=_n
>
> ***Do other stuff that changes the original data look
> sort x4 /*such as sort by x4*/
>
> preserve /*second preserve*/
> gen `what'=101-_n
> sort `what'
>
> ***
> ***do other stuff here based on the sorted order
> ***such as just keep the top 10 values of `what'
>
> drop if x3==.
> save h:\trial2.dta, replace
>
> restore /*second restore*/
>
> *do something else here that might change the order
> *or look of the original data
>
> sort `obsn'
> restore /*corresponding to the first preserve, though not
> necessary*/
>
> end
>
> trial
You can't preserve data twice unless you issue a -restore- or a -restore,
not- (to cancel the initial preserve) in between.
You can accomplish what I think you are trying to do by saving your data in
temporary files rather than preserving it
tempfile file1 file2
...
* replace your 1st preserve by
save "`file1'"
...
* ... and the second preserve by
save "`file2'"
Then you'll have complete freedom over which particular file you want to
load back into memory by using -use- rather than -restore-. The
double-quotes around the temporary filenames ensure the files will be saved
properly if the path to your temporary directory contains an embedded space.
(Also use the double-quotes when you later load the data, i.e. -use
"`file1'", clear-.)
Patrick Joly
[email protected]
[email protected]
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