On Oct 21, 2004, at 2:33, Kimberley wrote:
I am using Intercooled Stata 8, and am running into the problem of too
many
variables. The set is very large, but I only need about a quarter of
the
variables, but I cant drop any variables until stata reads them in and
defines the variables. Is there a way to drop some variables before
stata
defines them? Upgrading to SE is not really an option.
I don't think that Joseph's suggestion regarding 'use' will work if the
file is not already in Stata format. If the file is in ASCII, you can
bring the .dct file into any text editor (see the SSC item
texteditors)--NOT Excel nor Word!!!---and omit the variables you do not
want to read. Then it doesn't matter how many variables are in the .dat
file, since the .dct will specify that it is to read only a subset of
them.
You can't use the do-file editor to edit a huge .dct, but Excel is
surely not the right tool. If you're using a PC, Notepad or one of its
variants would probably work, but there are much better choices.
Kit Baum, Boston College Economics [email protected]
http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
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