st: Re: Insheet question

[Roger Newson <roger.newson@kcl.ac.uk>]

At 09:46 27/02/04 -0500, Robin Newberry wrote:
> Probably another dumb newbie question, but...
>
> I'm trying to read a tab delimited file into a Stata (Intercooled 8.2) 
> data set using insheet. It's fairly large (3800+ observations, 424 
> variables) and the first line contains the variable names. Without the 
> variable name line Stata reads it in fine, but with the variable name line 
> I get a
>
> "if invalid varname
> error in line 1 of file"
>
> error message. I've looked at the variable names, but I don't see anything 
> obviously wrong, and the Stata help file doesn't say much about what 
> constitutes valid variable names, nor is the User's Guide overwhelmingly 
> informative on this issue. Anyone know what the maximum length for a 
> variable name is? Any other common pitfalls unique to Stata I should look for?
It looks as if you have a variable named "if". The Stata language has a 
list of reserved words (including "if"), which cannot be used as variable 
names, because Stata wants to use them for something else. The full list is 
in Section 14.3 of the User's Guide (at least in Stata 7 and Stata 8).

I hope this helps.

Roger


--
Roger Newson
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Department of Public Health Sciences
King's College London
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Opinions expressed are those of the author, not the institution.

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