This looks to me like a fairly low-level problem. The message
Sarah received doesn't come from -destring- as such but (I guess)
from a -generate- call within that which hit this memory problem.
However, all will be agreed that this should not happen. Perhaps
Sarah can liaise with Stata tech-support so that they can try to
re-create the problem.
Nick
[email protected]
Sarah A. Mustillo
> I am doing some simple recoding and data cleaning on a
> relatively large
> data set. I tried to destring a variable, and got the error message
> that there was no more room. I saved the data, cleared, set
> my memory
> higher, and reopened the data. Then I tried to pick up where
> I left off
> with destringing, and got an error message that the variable is not
> found! What happened to my variable?
>
> Here's the output:
>
>
> . tab pared
>
> pared | Freq. Percent Cum.
> ------------+-----------------------------------
> * | 491 0.06 0.06
> 0 | 2 0.00 0.06
> 1 | 74,586 8.97 9.03
> 2 | 299,438 36.02 45.06
> 3 | 79,040 9.51 54.57
> 4 | 72,972 8.78 63.34
> 5 | 62,650 7.54 70.88
> 6 | 182,731 21.98 92.86
> 7 | 59,309 7.14 100.00
> ------------+-----------------------------------
> Total | 831,219 100.00
>
> . replace pared="" if pared=="*"
> (491 real changes made)
>
> . destring pared, replace
> no room to add more variables due to width
> An attempt was made to add a variable that would have
> increased the
> memory
> required to store an observation beyond what is
> currently possible.
> You have the
> following alternatives:
>
> 1. Store existing variables more efficiently; see help
> compress.
>
> 2. Drop some variables or observations; see help drop.
> (Think of
> Stata's data
> area as the area of a rectangle; Stata can trade
> off width and
> length.)
>
> 3. Increase the amount of memory allocated to the data
> area using
> the set
> memory command; see help memory.
> r(902);
>
> . save, replace
> file msbl03.dta saved
>
> . clear
>
> . set mem 500m
>
> Current memory allocation
>
> current
> memory usage
> settable value description
> (1M = 1024k)
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> set maxvar 5000 max. variables allowed
> 1.733M
> set memory 500M max. data space
> 500.000M
> set matsize 400 max. RHS vars in models
> 1.254M
>
> -----------
>
> 502.987M
>
> . use msbl03
>
> . destring pared, replace
> variable pared not found
> r(111);
>
>
> I know, I know - never do data management interactively...
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