THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! This method worked beautifully. My data
was in ASCII and I simply edited the dct file in wordpad and imported the
data in fixed format.
Thank you so much!
At 05:01 AM 10/21/2004, you wrote:
>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
>
>*
>* For searches and help try:
>* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
>* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
>* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
__________________________
Kimberly Singer
Administrative Assistant
Rine Lab
University of California
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
16 Barker Hall #3202
Berkeley, CA 94702
Tel: 510-643-5592
Fax: 510-642-6420
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
